COLUMBUS – Gov. Mike DeWine met with Ohio Department of Commerce Director Sherry Maxfield and state Fire Marshal Kevin Reardon on Friday at the Division of State Fire Marshal’s campus to announce a statewide public service announcement campaign to raise awareness of Ohio’s need for volunteer firefighters.
“Many Ohio communities rely on volunteer firefighters to keep them and their families safe every day,” said Governor DeWine. “As volunteer numbers decline, Ohioans are increasingly at risk. That’s why it’s so important to raise awareness of Ohio’s plight. We hope we can encourage Ohioans to become extraordinary heroes by serving their communities as volunteer firefighters.”
In 2022, Governor DeWine created the Volunteer Fire Service Task Force, a group comprised of volunteer fire departments, municipalities and state agencies, to study and improve the future sustainability of Ohio’s volunteer fire departments. The deployment of the PSA campaign is the most recently implemented recommendation cited in the task force’s 31-page report.
Starting immediately, two 30-second PSAs will air on television across the state, as well as ads on various digital platforms, including social media. The PSAs currently feature Ohio volunteer firefighters sharing why they chose to serve and encouraging Ohioans to consider joining the volunteer fire service themselves.
Individuals can visit MakeMeAFirefighter.org and search for opportunities to be a volunteer firefighter in their community or nearby. Users can then click on a specific job opening, read details about the role, and register their interest. Currently, the site lists nearly 400 open positions across Ohio.
About 70 percent of Ohio’s fire departments are volunteer. In Van Wert County, Convoy, Middle Point, Scott, Willshire and Wren are volunteer fire departments.
While the number of emergency calls is increasing nationwide, the number of volunteer firefighters is decreasing. From 2018 to 2021, there was a 6.5 percent decrease in the number of volunteer firefighters; from 2018 to 2020, however, there was a nine percent increase in calls.
A similar trend is occurring across the country. According to the National Volunteer Fire Council, about 65 percent of the nation’s estimated 1,041,200 firefighters are volunteers, and 64 percent of the 29,452 fire departments in the U.S. are all-volunteer. In 2020, the number of volunteer firefighters in the U.S. hit a low, while call volume has more than tripled over the past 35 years.
“Many Ohioans underestimate or are simply unaware of the important role volunteer firefighters play in our daily lives,” said Ohio Fire Commissioner Kevin Reardon. “There is no doubt that volunteers play a key role in our ability to maintain a strong, robust and responsive fire department across the state. These are men and women who, despite working full-time jobs, made the choice to step up and serve their communities and neighbors, often on the worst days of their lives. The trend we are currently seeing in Ohio is not sustainable, which is why now is the time for Ohioans to step up and become the hometown heroes our communities desperately need.”
In addition to the new awareness campaign, the Division of State Fire Marshal has made great strides in implementing other recommendations from the task force, including making training courses at the State Fire Marshal’s Ohio Fire Academy completely free for volunteer firefighters and volunteer fire departments, increasing grant funding for the fire departments to $7.5 million, and hiring a volunteer services coordinator to support the needs of Ohio’s volunteer fire departments.
