Volunteer Fireman’s Day

What the day is

Volunteer Fireman's Day is observed on January 10. It recognizes firefighters who serve without pay, which in the United States means most of them.

Origin and background

The proportion surprises people. Roughly two thirds of American firefighters are volunteers, and they cover the great majority of the country's departments, concentrated in smaller towns and rural areas where a paid roster could never be funded. For most of the United States by land area, the fire service is neighbors with pagers.

The tradition is older than the country. Benjamin Franklin helped organize one of the early volunteer companies in Philadelphia in 1736, and the model spread because it fitted communities that needed protection and had no tax base to buy it.

It is now under strain. Volunteer numbers have fallen substantially since the 1980s while call volumes have risen. The causes are structural rather than a decline in public spirit: training requirements have grown into hundreds of hours, people increasingly work outside the town they live in and so cannot answer a daytime call, and households with two working adults have less time to give.

What the job involves has also shifted. Most calls are not fires. Medical emergencies make up the majority of what fire departments respond to, so a volunteer firefighter is now, in practice, frequently a first responder arriving before an ambulance.

The risks are not only the obvious ones. Cardiac events are a leading cause of on-duty deaths, and the link between firefighting and several cancers is now well enough established that international health bodies classify the occupation itself as carcinogenic, driven by exposure to combustion products.

How to take part

• Thank your local department, and find out whether it is volunteer. Many people do not know.
• Ask whether they are recruiting. Support roles exist for people who will not enter a building.
• Make your house number visible from the road, day and night.
• Keep hydrants clear of snow and parked cars.
• Test your smoke alarms today, which is the single thing that most reduces their workload.
• Support funding for turnout gear cleaning and cancer screening, which are chronically underfunded.