Glen Cove Fire Department is looking for more volunteers
Sirens were blasting in Glen Cove last Saturday morning. Firefighters weren’t racing to a fire, but instead to an alarm detecting carbon dioxide at the Webb Institute. They arrived at the scene within minutes, and then returned to the firehouse after making sure the situation was resolved.
Glen Cove’s first responders answer roughly 3,000 calls per year, and, if needed, can make use of a mutual aid program with surrounding firehouses on the North Shore. The program, which was designed to compensate for the shortage of daytime manpower, was used twice this year for house fires.
“Mutual aid is very important not only to us, but to our neighbors as well,” Carlos Cardenas, the Fire Department’s 3rd assistant chief, said. “They’ve called us multiple times for help.”
Other towns and cities aren’t so lucky. Across the state, the sound of sirens racing to emergency calls is less frequent, because fire departments and crews of emergency medical technicians are plagued by staffing shortages. The New York State Department of Health Bureau of Emergency Services said earlier this year that it had seen a drop of nearly 10 percent in the number of certified EMTs over the past decade. Last year, according to the department, 15 percent of all available EMS personnel did not renew their certifications.
Although Glen Cove doesn’t face the same scarcity as other municipalities, Cardenas ex-pressed concern about recruiting and retaining more members of the Fire Department — especially given the construction of multi-story residential buildings throughout the city, some of which have wooden components to their architecture.
Recruitment efforts are improving slightly, Cardenas said, but the unpredictable nature of emergencies makes it difficult to define exactly how many responders the department needs from year to year in
ts four divisions, the Pacific company, Hook and Ladder, Chemical and Company four.
The departments can comfortably retain about 30 volunteers each, but Fire Chief Robert S. Retoske said there are only about 80 firefighters at the firehouse now.
Cardenas has concluded that people aren’t as enthusiastic to volunteer because of the amount of time they must commit to training, and then to the station. New firefighters start as probationary members and receive in-house training, but they are also required to take certification classes at the Nassau County Fire Service Academy.
“It’s a shame, because when I joined, it was great — the morale was good,” Cardenas said. “Everybody wanted to be here, but when you don’t have enough people coming through the door, it changes the whole aspect of how we have to do things.”
Cardenas and volunteer EMS Chief Robert C. Picoli both said that economic challenges are a common reason for the dwindling number of volunteers. Potential responders voice concerns about the high cost of living and changes in family life and the responsibilities of child care.
“Your average person isn’t only working one job anymore,” Picoli said. “People are working two jobs, three jobs, and it leaves less time to do stuff on a volunteer basis.”
Only two Long Island departments, Setauket and Long Beach, have some paid firefighters. There are none in Glen Cove, but the GCFD offers scholarships to the children of firefighters who are applying to college. The city has both volunteer and paid EMS responders, but the wages of those paid by the city have not been competitive with pay in neighboring towns, which has affected the retention rate. Mayor Pamela Panzenbeck said that the city recently approved emergency resolutions to raise wages for Basic Life Support EMS responders from $18 per hour to $23, and for Advanced Life Support EMS, from $20.50 to $27.
“We have to have EMS,” Panzenbeck said. “We’re all getting older,”
The city currently has a total of about 50 EMS responders, a number nearly as low as it has been at any time in the past 20 years. Picoli said that recruiting EMS personnel has its own complications. Like the Fire Department, there is a struggle to delegate staffing responsibilities, since there are fewer volunteers. And given the emotional toll on health care workers during the pandemic, Picoli added, he worries for the future of health care in general, and predicts that in the coming years there will simply be fewer people interested in taking care of others.
