Will Volunteer Fire Departments Survive This Blaze?

Imagine how you’d feel if your house catches fire and you call the local volunteer fire department and no one is volunteering. That’s what could yet happen if the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s latest proposed regulations go into effect. They are meeting a backlash from volunteer firefighters, who fear the proposed rules will lead to a closing fire departments and spark a “mass exodus” of volunteers.We don’t doubt OSHA’s “good intentions” to overhaul the outdated regulations and protect firefighters from on-the-job hazards. Yet the disastrous rollout of the proposed rules shows why unelected bureaucrats at Washington — many of whom have likely never seen the inside of a fire truck — shouldn’t be imposing uninformed and national mandates on fire departments that have vastly different resources and needs. The proposal, called the “Emergency Response Standard,” aims to include a “broader scope of emergency responders” and would have the effect of classifying many volunteer firefighters as employees, as our Maggie Hroncich reports. It would require those volunteers to go through extensive extra training, on top of their other full-time jobs, and force already stretched departments to obtain expensive new equipment.So intense was the national pushback that it reached the ears of a group of senators who called on OSHA to grant a clear exemption for volunteer fire departments, many of which would lack the resources to comply with the regulations. Noting that some 85 percent of fire departments are volunteer or mostly-volunteer, the senators said the regulations would “jeopardize” their lifesaving services. To OSHA’s credit, after the widespread backlash, the agency acknowledged that its initial determination about the rules was based on “limited evidence” and that volunteers, fire chiefs, and even representatives in Congress had given the agency “crucial information” to ponder. It’s now in the middle of a weeks-long hearing to further consider if the proposed rules are feasible for volunteer firefighters. “Every dollar that small fire departments have to spend on this unfunded, paper-pushing mandate means one dollar that’s redirected from safety equipment for our firefighters,” a training officer for Sheridan County Rural fire district in Kansas, Steve Hirsch, said during the hearing on Monday. Noting the extensive sacrifices of time and finances that many volunteer firefighters make, he said, “please don’t add to their burden.” As the regulations would require extensive additional resources for truck checks, medical exams, officer training, brake testing, and other tasks, the National Volunteer Fire Council says it believes the cost of compliance could be greater than OSHA’s estimate of $14,000 annually. Last week, the council told OSHA that while it believed the agency had “the best of intentions,” that the proposed standards are an “overreach.”“Very few, if any of the over 24,000 volunteer or mostly volunteer fire departments, representing over 676,000 volunteer firefights in the United States, would be able to comply completely” with the standards as written, a representative of the council, David Denniston, said. “It is often stated that you can’t put a price on safety. Unfortunately however, safety does come with a price tag. If the price tag is too high or unrealistic, it can never be met.”As OSHA’s hearing drags on through December 4, local communities can only hope the federal agency will take these concerns seriously and work to find a better solution. When a slew of firefighters across the country are telling a regulatory agency that a set of proposed rules will shutter fire departments, it’s worth listening to them. President-elect Trump is vowing to cut illogical regulations, and this is a good place to start.

Will Volunteer Fire Departments Survive This Blaze?

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