Transcripts

LEIF ENGER: The post office in Ponsford, a town of a few hundred set between prairie and pine country in Northwest Minnesota, had a close call a few weeks ago. This is no brick post office, but a clapboard one, an old structure, bone dry boards and peeling paint. Stretching away behind the building and coming to within inches of its back wall lie the ashes of a carbonized hayfield. The air smells like a lit grill.

BETTE DEWANDELER: I saw the smoke around that house over there, and I tried to call up there to see if anybody was home. [CHUCKLES] And he was. And he said he was watering down his buildings. And when it came on the other side of his trees, it came across a field in about five minutes. It was so fast. The wind was blowing that day.

LEIF ENGER: Postmaster Bette DeWandeler expected to lose the building. She thought the house next door would go too. Both were in the path of the quickest moving fire she'd ever seen. But then some neighbors showed up and a DNR fire crew and the local volunteer fire department based right here in Ponsford. Not a board was lost. DeWandeler professes a new respect for firefighters.

BETTE DEWANDELER: Very important. I didn't appreciate 'em as much as I do now.

LEIF ENGER: 20 years ago, a fire like this would have gotten the post office and maybe more of Ponsford too. 1976 was a dry year, Roger Wilson recalls. And the nearest fire truck then was 20 miles distant. That's when he and other residents of nearby Carsonville Township decided to organize themselves into a volunteer fire department. Wilson is the chief.

ROGER WILSON: We were able to get a truck through the DNR. And at that time, we had pretty good support, and membership was not too hard to get. We had close to 20 members at that time who were all pretty active and were in the area quite a bit.

LEIF ENGER: Nowadays, Wilson is glad if he can get three or four firefighters out to a daytime call. Partly that's because so many young people now work in Park Rapids or Detroit Lakes, too far away to be of help. But Wilson thinks there's another problem, and it's plain disinterest.

ROGER WILSON: There's just all kinds of different activities. They'll drive a long ways to do different things, and possibly some of them just sit in front of the television a little bit more than they used to. And they don't want the commitment that a fire department demands.

LEIF ENGER: The story is becoming common in rural Minnesota. While the demand for fire protection has never been higher, Carsonville had 49 fire calls last year, up from 3 two decades ago. The ranks of volunteers have thinned. Bill Bruen of Metropolitan State University's Fire EMS Center has watched trends in fire service for more than 30 years.

BILL BRUEN: I can remember back in the '70s as an example, when most departments had waiting lists, you couldn't get on the fire department unless there was a retirement or a death. And that simply isn't the case anymore. Folks are out actively recruiting. You'll see ads on local TV. You'll see bulletins in the local grocery store. You'll see ads in the local paper.

LEIF ENGER: There are exceptions, Bruen points out, a few departments that still have waiting lists that are highly visible in their communities, that kids still grow up wanting to join. But for the most part, Bruen says, recent social and economic patterns have hurt volunteer departments.

There are more families now where both parents work. It's harder to drop everything and head for a fire if no one's at home with the kids. Many of those kids in turn grow up reluctant to volunteer themselves. It doesn't help, says Park Rapids' Fire Chief Al [? Czesak, ?] that those who do volunteer face increasingly heavy training mandates and regulations.

SPEAKER: We require our people to, within at least the first year, attend the basic firefighting course offered through the technical college system, also attend a sectional fire school, plus our monthly in-house meetings. So you're looking at minimum of 72 hours the first year plus going to fires. It's a part-time job.

LEIF ENGER: [? Czesak ?] runs a department of 26 firefighters. There's an opening right now, the first in his six years as chief, he says, that's proving difficult to fill. Peter Leschak, a writer and chief of the French Township Fire Department on the Mesabi Iron Range, says the biggest problem in his district is demographics. His township has more residents than ever, but they're older than ever too. The average age of Leschak's firefighters is 40.

PETER LESCHAK: We've gained four in the last year, but they're 42 years old and 43 years old. And I think we had one 35-year-old. So the joke was, thanks for joining, but you guys are already over the hill. In about 10 years or so, we're going to have a big problem. And it's not just this fire department. Several of the surrounding fire departments aren't exactly the same boat. And when we get together in meetings, everybody commiserates. Everybody has the same problem. What are we going to do for people in 10 years?

LEIF ENGER: One answer, Leschak says, will be increased mutual aid between neighboring communities. French Township, for example, has joined a coalition with five other rural departments. They save money by training together and answer each other's calls for assistance when caught shorthanded.

Another idea gaining steam is to start paying firefighters. Right now, only 22 of the state's 800-plus fire departments include salaried positions. The rest offer small pensions at retirement, token payments of a few dollars per call, or no compensation whatever. Bill Bruen of the Fire EMS Center says communities may have to begin thinking of firefighters the same way they think of police.

BILL BRUEN: All of your police departments in Minnesota have generally full- or part-time people that are being paid a fairly decent salary. So fire protection in Minnesota is probably the best bargain around. And cities are simply going to have to shift their priorities in the direction of fire departments if they want to achieve the same level of service as they've had in the past.

LEIF ENGER: The prospect of paying firefighters, Bruen says, might bring back the days of waiting lists, but it's also likely to be unpopular. The police, after all, are supported by property taxes, which many believe are rising fast enough already. Leif Enger, Main Street Radio.