Cannon Beach Fire & Rescue lost almost half of its paid volunteers over the last decade, dropping from 25 to 14. Meanwhile, calls for service increased by 16% last year.
Fire Chief Marc Reckmann said many volunteers have retired or been priced out of the area’s increasingly tight housing market. The ones that remain aren’t always available to respond at a moment’s notice.
“Volunteers can’t just leave their jobs anymore like they used to. It used to be that stores would shut down — whole businesses would shut down — and they’d come to the fire station for a call,” he said. “We just don’t have the availability we used to.”
Farther down the coast, similar problems persist.
Acting Fire Chief Jeff Adkins said the Coos Bay Fire Department has also lost a significant number of volunteers over the past several years. The department currently has 12 volunteers, well below the 25 that Adkins said would constitute a full staff.
In addition to retirement, he said a shift in the culture of volunteer firefighting may be driving the decline.
“We hold everyone to a higher standard than they probably were held to 40 to 50 years ago,” he said. “It’s not as much of a social club as it used to be.”
According to the National Volunteer Fire Council, two-thirds of the nation’s firefighters are volunteers. But the volunteer force is down by 200,000 since 1984.
“This is not an Oregon Coast thing, it’s not a state of Oregon thing — it’s a national thing, where volunteerism has declined,” Adkins said.
Both Coos Bay and Cannon Beach rely heavily on volunteer firefighters, though fewer respond to calls in Coos Bay. Adkins said his department’s volunteers are more involved with auxiliary activities, but receive the same training as career staff.
Volunteers in Cannon Beach receive a small stipend each month based on the number of calls they respond to, while volunteers in Coos Bay are unpaid.
Adkins said the Coos Bay Fire Department is set to launch a recruitment campaign that aims “to get people into that community-minded spirit again.”
As for Cannon Beach, Reckmann and a number of other North Coast fire chiefs recently met with the Daily Astorian to get the word out about the staffing crisis.
The department has also started a program to encourage people who live outside of the Cannon Beach Fire District to become paid, on-call volunteers.
“We’re not going away. We just need some more help,” Reckmann said.
Fire Chiefs Marc Reckmann and Jeff Adkins spoke with OPB’s Geoff Norcross on “Think Out Loud.” Click "Listen" to listen to the full conversation:
Copyright 2023 Oregon Public Broadcasting. To see more, visit Oregon Public Broadcasting.
