The fight to save the local volunteer fire department in Big Beaver Borough, Pennsylvania, is heating up, with the fire chief warning that they’ll cease operations in the community altogether on New Years Day if progress isn’t made.
The sticking point, according to Volunteer Fire Chief Matt Straub, is the dwindling number of volunteer members in the department and the lack of action by the town to help rectify it.
Straub told CBS News that, due to older volunteers retiring and a lack of new recruits, “we don’t have the man power” to respond to emergencies “safely or efficiently” (1).
He said that his department has worked with local government officials since 2019 to address the issue, and that members of the town council “unofficially” admit the need to act. The solution, he says, is funding “paid staffing,” with CBS reporting that community members agreed in principle to a tax increase if it meant saving the fire department.
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A regional government study (2) of the wider Beaver County from 2023 noted that “smaller departments” like those in Big Beaver Borough, which boasts a population of just under 2,000 residents (3), offer “few incentives” and “are often at a disadvantage in the recruitment and retention of quality firefighters.”
Still, Straub says that after “hundreds and hundreds of man-hours” spent on a proposal to hire a paid fire administrator and part-time firefighters, the town council voted it down in October. He called it “a slap in the face” that left them no choice but to cease operations in 2026.
“If we all walk away, who’s going to do it?” Straub said. “Unfortunately, that’s what we’re looking at now, and it breaks our heart.”
Why the ranks of volunteer firefighters are shrinking
The problems plaguing Big Beaver Borough’s volunteer fire department are all too common across the United States. According to the nonprofit National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC), 65% of the approximately 1,041,200 firefighters in the United States are volunteers, as are roughly the same percentage of fire departments across the country (4).
They add, however, that the number of volunteer firefighters has plummeted in recent years, a claim backed by stats from the National Fire Protection Association that show the U.S. had 676,900 volunteer firefighters in 2020 — the last year of available data — which marks “a 25% decrease from the peak number of volunteers in 1984” (5).
"We’re leaking out one side, and not filling the bucket on the other side,” Lori Moore-Merrell, former U.S. fire administrator with the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), told the BBC in 2024. “We not only have a recruitment issue, we have a retention problem" (6).
Part of the issue with recruiting new volunteer firefighters is pay. Due to the Fair Labor Standards Act, fire departments aren’t legally allowed to pay volunteer firefighters.
So, while the median annual pay for “career,” or paid, firefighters stood at $59,530 in 2024 — with benefits like life insurance, health and dental and a retirement plan tacked on — volunteers generally only receive a “nominal fee” (7). That, the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) says, can also be combined with “expenses, reasonable benefits, or any combination thereof, without jeopardizing their volunteer status” (8).
A nominal fee is defined as “an amount not exceeding 20%” of a full-time firefighter’s pay — the example given that if a full-time firefighter makes $50,000 per year, then a volunteer would make $9,500 — while the “reasonable benefits” could include a pension plan.
In addition to lower pay, other factors that may prohibit more volunteer firefighters signing up include the inherent danger of the job, or the fact that a volunteer must be available on a moment’s notice to fight a fire while also holding down a paying job elsewhere.
To that end, the rising cost of living that requires people to work longer, and often both spouses in a family to work full time, leaves little room for such intense volunteer demands.
Conversely, as the number of volunteer firefighters shrinks in the U.S., the NVFC notes that “call volume has more than tripled in the last 35 years, due in large part to the increase in emergency medical calls” (4).
This often leaves small communities like Big Beaver Borough reliant on fire departments from bigger neighboring municipalities, and facing firefighter shortages during disasters like the increasingly dangerous wildfire season.
As Chief Brian Schnibbe of the Hastings on Hudson Fire Department in New York told the BBC, “if you go out into rural America, you could have six guys covering 20-square-miles” (6).
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The burning question of how you entice people to become volunteer firefighters
The NVFC found that “the time donated by volunteer firefighters saves localities across the country an estimated $46.9 billion per year” — another reason volunteers are so important to smaller municipalities (4).
So, while the number of career firefighters is projected to increase by 3% by 2034, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, firefighting officials and related organizations across the country are working on strategies to bolster the ranks of volunteers.
Part of that includes “breaking bad habits” when it comes to recruitment and retention, according to the IAFC (9). That, they say, means not just assuming people will sign up and, instead, promoting more active recruitment events, cultivating a sense of appreciation within the volunteer ranks and expanding their commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Others, like Chief Matt Hohon of the Granbury Volunteer Fire Department in Texas, say that “your messaging is off” if you struggle to recruit volunteers (10).
In an interview with the NVFC, Hohon recommends highlighting the instant impact and difference a volunteer firefighter makes in their community, as well as the fact that they spend much of their time away from fighting fires with things like training, inspections, public outreach, community education and recruitment.
The NVFC adds that other possible ways to find success with volunteer recruits, as may be needed in Big Beaver Borough, are to focus on creating a greater presence on social media, partner with local colleges, encourage word of mouth between friends and participate more in community events.
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Article sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines.
CBS News (1); Pennsylvania Governor’s Center for Local Government Services (2); Big Beaver Borough (3); National Volunteer Fire Council (4), (10); National Fire Protection Association (5); BBC (6); International Association of Fire Chiefs (7), (8), (9)
This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: PA volunteer fire department threatens to shutter if they don’t get paid. Why the chief says it’s a matter of safety
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