What will happen if a volunteer fire company can’t get volunteers or money? According to the leadership of the Concordville Fire & Protective Assn., it costs money to fight fires and its lack could result in less coverage and increased danger.
“Unfortunately, everything is about money,” said fire company President Lee Weersing. And traditional volunteer fire companies are moving to paid firefighters. That costs money, and it’s happening throughout the country.
Weersing and Fire Chief Bob Vasek said during a recent interview that they will be asking the municipalities that Concordville Fire Co. covers for more money from their 2024 budgets. For some, the amount requested will more than double what they pay now.
Those municipalities include Concord, Chadds Ford, and Thornbury townships in Delaware County and Birmingham Township in Chester County. Those municipalities, in 2022, gave Concordville $448,278 but the company is asking for twice as much. Payroll and taxes alone come to more than $1,000,000, more than double the current contributions. New ambulances also cost. They paid $220,000 for an ambulance two years ago. They ordered another one in January of this year and that cost was more than $300,000. Firetrucks are going for more than $1,000,000. As of now, he added, the fire company has a shortfall of $526,000 per year for the next five years if the current amount of revenues does not increase.
“We’re not looking to make a profit. We’re just looking to do it safely and do it correctly,” he said.
Concord’s current donation is $280,000 while the fire company is asking for an additional $280,000. And Chadds Ford Township supervisors said earlier this month, that Concordville wants an additional $125,000 above the township’s existing $65,000 donation.
Weersing said the fire company had planned to ask for more money a few years ago but COVID caused a delay.
“We couldn’t have meetings with people, the funding wasn’t out there for grants. It all got pulled back.”
But the government's reaction to the pandemic had another effect as well. “COVID also took away a lot of volunteers from us,” he added and said supplies were in short supply and costs for available supplies increased. He said there was enough money to stay afloat. There wasn’t enough money available for grants.
“We couldn’t do training; we couldn’t advance that,” he said.
Even the human energy at the station declined during COVID, Weersing said. Volunteers would only come in to do a fire run, but there was no socializing along with the lack of training time. “People got out of the habit of coming.”
But a loss of volunteers during COVID was part of a trend that the fire company saw coming years earlier, that the trend was for paid firefighters, not volunteers. Concordville had started hiring new firetruck drivers even before the pandemic. That hiring increased when COVID hit and has reached the point where Concordville’s firefighting personnel is 50 percent volunteer, 50 percent paid, but with management remaining volunteer, he said.
“As volunteerism has gone by the wayside, we had to do big increases and increase our staffing, which is the crux of where we are right now. Not only are we paying a lot of salaries, but everybody else is doing the same thing,” Weersing said.
It’s a matter of supply and demand. With the supply of volunteers drying up, the demand for paid firefighters increases, and it’s doing so across the board. He cited other area fire companies such as Longwood, Oxford, and Goshen are hiring and he noted that municipalities such as Kennett Township and Kennett Square need to make decisions on how they can support proper firefighting companies in the face of rising costs.
While money for personnel is the issue, the status of equipment is good. Weersing said all their trucks are up to date and paid for.
Fire Chief Bob Vasek added, however, that maintenance can become a financial issue, as can keeping fuel in the trucks.
There is money in reserve that has been untouchable for years, a bequeathment from the Heyburn Estate, but Weersing said the dividends aren’t coming in on that fund because of the state of the economy.
“We’re going to start eating into that — to about $500,000 — if we don’t get any increase from the townships. We can sustain that for a little bit but, once the money is gone, it’s gone and it’s never coming back.
And it gets worse with the increasing demand for paid firefighters. Weersing said some of the other companies are offering 15-20 percent increases.
The bottom-line question is what happens if the fire company doesn’t get the increases it needs?
According to Weersing, “For the immediate future, we’ll keep running the way we are. Eventually, the level of service will have to change. Less coverage, response times might increase.”
And Vasek said fewer fighters on a run could mean danger increases for those who are responding to a fire call. And people are getting burnt out.
“We're on pace to run more than 4,000 ambulance calls this year and more than 1,000 fire. And our people are getting tired.”
Right now, Concordville Fire Co. is playing a waiting game. Weersing said they won’t know how much they’ll get until the municipalities pass their respective budgets for next year.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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