The Challenges of Being a Firefighter

The challenges faced by a professional fire department are numerous. But here’s the top four problems faced: recruitment, funding, manpower, and morale.

Because professional fire departments are not always paid a regular salary, getting people to join is a major challenge faced on a daily basis. Most of the time, people look to see how much money they will make. When they find out that they only get a Christmas bonus, often times they change their mind.

Funding is a concern because everything has to be approved before being able to purchase. Situations may arise when people need gear; it needs to be approved. New tools need to be approved first. It may take days, weeks, even months before it will be approved. Meanwhile you just have to make do with what you got.

Manpower during the day and early morning is a challenge because people work during the day and need sleep. Sometimes trucks will roll out of the station under manned for calls, and sometimes it’s no problem, but when a truck rolls out with only three people to a house fire, you got a problem.

Morale is an issue due to firefighters getting tired of going on stupid calls and not getting anything in return, which brings up a very old but very true saying “You gotta love what you do.” Being a volunteer firefighter takes a lot out of somebody but when you love firefighting as much as firefighters do its no problem. I have been a firefighter for three years and I love it, I love the fact of when everything goes wrong, and we come rolling up people seem to get a feeling of relief.

In closing, I would like to say that firefighting is something that not everyone is cut out to do. Firefighters are a special breed of people. Even though we face several challenges, we seem to make everything seem better.

Philip Perry