A View from 30,000 Feet (Literally)
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Chief J.B. Kohan
NYSAFC Special Operations Committee
I’m jetting back early from a business trip due to pending flight cancellations caused by a storm. What happened to the days when airplanes flew in rain, snow, and wind? Probably the same thing as riding the back step and using cheaters.
It is not important who I am. I am one of you, a faceless volunteer firefighter and responder who raised his hand many years ago to give service and became a chief officer along the way. As with many of you, I have seen things people should never bear witness to and beamed with pride as we stood tall in the face of adversity. I am humbled and honored to serve. And as I once heard in the movies, "I have been around and seen some things." The days of the fire house being the community’s social hub appears to be a thing of the past. I tell our members, the new world order is God, family, exercise, work, and then maybe the fire house. This is disturbing, because community service and volunteerism have been the hallmarks of our culture since the days of the American Revolution.
One of the major issues continuing to confront the fire service has been recruitment and retention. Rather than rehash the marginal effectiveness of existing recruitment and retention benefits, we need to focus on a future that provides for increased service in a fiscally responsible manner. Offering LOSAP, real estate tax credits, college tuition reimbursement, and other inducements are well documented. However, they are not enough to sustain the current service demands upon the volunteer fire service and present only part of an answer, as nationally (and statewide), membership continues to decline at an alarming pace. Alarm volumes continue to increase as suburban sprawl surrounds our metropolitan areas placing a higher demand upon first responders. Lest we forget the trend that EMS volume continues to increase as fire alarms decline, which is both a blessing and a curse. This is indicative of a demographic shift, the aging of our population, and the strides made in fire protection resulting in fire deaths being driven to an all-time low.
To meet this challenge there is support, both qualitative and quantitative, surrounding the need to consider a new model. Agency staffing with career personnel supplemented with a volunteer component insures a consistent level of service to our customers. The combination model augmented with paid on-call volunteers has proven effective in other states with expanding demographics and should be considered for New York state. This model transfers the burden from the all-volunteer service. With respect to the paid on-call system, some departments are considering a tiered system whereby a member is paid a nominal amount for each response that increases upon attainment of a certain percentage of attendance. This payment is capped at an approved level and paid to the member as an annual reimbursement.
The newly released FEMA Strategic Plan (2022) continues to transfer the risk of community resiliency to the states and local governments in terms of first response, incident management, as well as mitigation, education, and recovery. What starts locally should end locally. DHS funding is already predicated upon state and individual agency compliance with NIMS and ICS. Best guess is that additional funds will be made available to compliant states and agencies. New York state already has annual competitive grant funding for emergency management, haz-mat, and technical rescue disciplines. Expansion of the grant program seeded with federal dollars appears likely in the near term and should be a part of our legislative agenda when we meet with our federal representatives.
One of the stated goals within the FEMA Strategic Plan is to train SLT partners (state, local, and tribal) to plug and play regardless of location. It is time for the fire service to be more cognizant of volunteer members' time. FEMA and TEEX have made awareness classes (Level 1) available online and these classes should be given full reciprocity by New York state absent any further plenary review. NYS DOH’s migration toward the NREMT model permits some didactic online classes. Nothing takes the place of fire school and the required attendance of participants for National Firefighter I and II and the EMT certifications. Haz-Mat Awareness and certain special operations classes are also now afforded to first responders using this bifurcated model. In addition to ensuring practical skills are properly learned and tested, attendance at these classes helps promote a network bond (aka the brotherhood) that transcends the classroom. New York state should continue to resource type first response equipment and expand the state’s regional stockpiles. This provides a process, economies of scale, and, in theatre, insures mutual aid resources can work together at expanding incidents with real time access to physical assets. Consolidation of resources is consistent with the progressive delivery of services, is fiscally prudent, and comports with both FEMA’s strategic goals and the governor’s agenda. DHSES has done a good job of prepositioning stockpiles into regional theatres and, when appropriate, pre-deploying resources.
Department consolidation and regional/local deployment of redundant assets to alarms plague our delivery model and are not based upon commercially reasonable standards, but remain politically driven. By way of example, certain counties have antiquated response models surrounding emergency medical dispatch (EMD) that need to be addressed as local agencies continue to share resources. A review of the more progressive national urban EMD models has proven they provide a better quality of service and response times at less or equivalent cost to the end user. Some agencies already share fly cars for EMS response and have automatic mutual aid for various fire apparatus depending upon location and type of alarm. By incorporating municipal and private sector assets, certain agencies have recognized that combining forces is better than standing alone. Consolidation at the expense of an ISO rating or response time is not suggested, but do we really need fire district and taxpayer funded overhead that do not have any touch points with the actual delivery of services or duplicative special units located within proximity to each other? Divide and conquer. It is math and analytics, nothing more. The axiom that "numbers don’t lie" rings true.
My query and challenge presented to chief officers is, what do you think the first response model is going to look like five years from now? Most of the volunteer chiefs of today will be out of office and presiding in the back room of their fire houses with glory stories of their white helmet days. Some within our ranks need to be forward thinking. The existing model is not sustainable. While some may point to the concept of "home rule" in New York state (which is an antiquated construct and political football and should be overturned), recent actions by the governor and the Legislature have demonstrated that when protecting our citizenry during times of crisis, the concept has been disregarded. And rightfully so.
The preceding suggestions balance the longstanding traditions of the fire and emergency services of our state, while also providing a framework for a safer, more efficient model for the future. The gauntlet has been thrown down. It is incumbent upon chief officers to be forward thinking and to embrace the new world order. The NYSAFC membership, through its myriad of committees, is uniquely positioned to offer comment and should play an active role in this discussion. History has shown us, if we do not figure it out, it will be figured out for us. To be foretold is forewarned.
About the Author:
Jonathan B. Kohan is chief of the Atlantic Beach Rescue Unit, Inc. of Nassau County. He serves as a member of the NYSAFC Special Operations Committee.
NYSAFC Special Operations Committee
I’m jetting back early from a business trip due to pending flight cancellations caused by a storm. What happened to the days when airplanes flew in rain, snow, and wind? Probably the same thing as riding the back step and using cheaters.
It is not important who I am. I am one of you, a faceless volunteer firefighter and responder who raised his hand many years ago to give service and became a chief officer along the way. As with many of you, I have seen things people should never bear witness to and beamed with pride as we stood tall in the face of adversity. I am humbled and honored to serve. And as I once heard in the movies, "I have been around and seen some things." The days of the fire house being the community’s social hub appears to be a thing of the past. I tell our members, the new world order is God, family, exercise, work, and then maybe the fire house. This is disturbing, because community service and volunteerism have been the hallmarks of our culture since the days of the American Revolution.
One of the major issues continuing to confront the fire service has been recruitment and retention. Rather than rehash the marginal effectiveness of existing recruitment and retention benefits, we need to focus on a future that provides for increased service in a fiscally responsible manner. Offering LOSAP, real estate tax credits, college tuition reimbursement, and other inducements are well documented. However, they are not enough to sustain the current service demands upon the volunteer fire service and present only part of an answer, as nationally (and statewide), membership continues to decline at an alarming pace. Alarm volumes continue to increase as suburban sprawl surrounds our metropolitan areas placing a higher demand upon first responders. Lest we forget the trend that EMS volume continues to increase as fire alarms decline, which is both a blessing and a curse. This is indicative of a demographic shift, the aging of our population, and the strides made in fire protection resulting in fire deaths being driven to an all-time low.
To meet this challenge there is support, both qualitative and quantitative, surrounding the need to consider a new model. Agency staffing with career personnel supplemented with a volunteer component insures a consistent level of service to our customers. The combination model augmented with paid on-call volunteers has proven effective in other states with expanding demographics and should be considered for New York state. This model transfers the burden from the all-volunteer service. With respect to the paid on-call system, some departments are considering a tiered system whereby a member is paid a nominal amount for each response that increases upon attainment of a certain percentage of attendance. This payment is capped at an approved level and paid to the member as an annual reimbursement.
The newly released FEMA Strategic Plan (2022) continues to transfer the risk of community resiliency to the states and local governments in terms of first response, incident management, as well as mitigation, education, and recovery. What starts locally should end locally. DHS funding is already predicated upon state and individual agency compliance with NIMS and ICS. Best guess is that additional funds will be made available to compliant states and agencies. New York state already has annual competitive grant funding for emergency management, haz-mat, and technical rescue disciplines. Expansion of the grant program seeded with federal dollars appears likely in the near term and should be a part of our legislative agenda when we meet with our federal representatives.
One of the stated goals within the FEMA Strategic Plan is to train SLT partners (state, local, and tribal) to plug and play regardless of location. It is time for the fire service to be more cognizant of volunteer members' time. FEMA and TEEX have made awareness classes (Level 1) available online and these classes should be given full reciprocity by New York state absent any further plenary review. NYS DOH’s migration toward the NREMT model permits some didactic online classes. Nothing takes the place of fire school and the required attendance of participants for National Firefighter I and II and the EMT certifications. Haz-Mat Awareness and certain special operations classes are also now afforded to first responders using this bifurcated model. In addition to ensuring practical skills are properly learned and tested, attendance at these classes helps promote a network bond (aka the brotherhood) that transcends the classroom. New York state should continue to resource type first response equipment and expand the state’s regional stockpiles. This provides a process, economies of scale, and, in theatre, insures mutual aid resources can work together at expanding incidents with real time access to physical assets. Consolidation of resources is consistent with the progressive delivery of services, is fiscally prudent, and comports with both FEMA’s strategic goals and the governor’s agenda. DHSES has done a good job of prepositioning stockpiles into regional theatres and, when appropriate, pre-deploying resources.
Department consolidation and regional/local deployment of redundant assets to alarms plague our delivery model and are not based upon commercially reasonable standards, but remain politically driven. By way of example, certain counties have antiquated response models surrounding emergency medical dispatch (EMD) that need to be addressed as local agencies continue to share resources. A review of the more progressive national urban EMD models has proven they provide a better quality of service and response times at less or equivalent cost to the end user. Some agencies already share fly cars for EMS response and have automatic mutual aid for various fire apparatus depending upon location and type of alarm. By incorporating municipal and private sector assets, certain agencies have recognized that combining forces is better than standing alone. Consolidation at the expense of an ISO rating or response time is not suggested, but do we really need fire district and taxpayer funded overhead that do not have any touch points with the actual delivery of services or duplicative special units located within proximity to each other? Divide and conquer. It is math and analytics, nothing more. The axiom that "numbers don’t lie" rings true.
My query and challenge presented to chief officers is, what do you think the first response model is going to look like five years from now? Most of the volunteer chiefs of today will be out of office and presiding in the back room of their fire houses with glory stories of their white helmet days. Some within our ranks need to be forward thinking. The existing model is not sustainable. While some may point to the concept of "home rule" in New York state (which is an antiquated construct and political football and should be overturned), recent actions by the governor and the Legislature have demonstrated that when protecting our citizenry during times of crisis, the concept has been disregarded. And rightfully so.
The preceding suggestions balance the longstanding traditions of the fire and emergency services of our state, while also providing a framework for a safer, more efficient model for the future. The gauntlet has been thrown down. It is incumbent upon chief officers to be forward thinking and to embrace the new world order. The NYSAFC membership, through its myriad of committees, is uniquely positioned to offer comment and should play an active role in this discussion. History has shown us, if we do not figure it out, it will be figured out for us. To be foretold is forewarned.
About the Author:
Jonathan B. Kohan is chief of the Atlantic Beach Rescue Unit, Inc. of Nassau County. He serves as a member of the NYSAFC Special Operations Committee.
