A brotherhood of firefighters

[Sally]

It's great how the firefighters from the U.S. go over to train iin Israel by helping to put out fires. Reminds me of the time that Israeli pilots came to Miramar Air Station down near San Diego with a captured MIG to give our own Top Gons practice against a MIG.

A brotherhood of firefighters

American firefighters are training in Israel, putting out fires down south

BY SIMONE SOMEKH July 18, 2014


Billy Hirth loves the Jewish people. Hirth, 52, a senior firefighter from Arlington, Texas, has been in Israel’s southern region for the last few days, helping local firefighters put out the fires caused by rockets from Gaza.

“I love Israel and its people — they are kind and giving. So I wanted to be helpful,” said Hirth. “My family has been very supportive, even though my wife doesn’t really want to know the details of what I’m doing.”

Hirth is here with 12 other colleagues of the Emergency Volunteers Project, a non-profit organization that trains American firefighters to operate in the Israeli environment during emergencies. The project was co-founded four years ago by Adi Zahavi, an Israeli volunteer medic from Jerusalem, who thought that recruiting reinforcements from abroad could help local firefighters.

Read more:

A brotherhood of firefighters | The Times of Israel

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd used to be a volunteer fireman `til one day he looked around the side of the truck during a run an' a bird hit him inna face...

Crisis Looms as America’s Volunteer Firefighters Burn Out
October 20th, 2014 ~ Almost 300 years after U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin established the very first volunteer fire department, the time-honored American tradition of unpaid good Samaritans banding together to save homes and properties in their community is in danger of being extinguished.

Franklin founded The Union Fire Company with 30 volunteers in 1736. In addition to Franklin, famous Americans who served as volunteer firefighters include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock and Paul Revere.The Union Fire Company helped cement Franklin’s legacy as a civic leader, and furthered the notion that instead of looking to the government for solutions, the community could come together and help itself.

Benjamin Franklin in a Union Fire Company uniform in front of the Union Fire Company building

However, modern lifestyles, including heavier time demands on adults and many more extracurricular activities for young people, have slowly chipped away at the volunteer firefighter ranks. “It’s a sign of the times,” said Dan Schmidt, a spokesperson for the Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department in Virginia, where the vast majority of firefighters are paid professionals. “People are busy; they have children, they have jobs. They have commitments.” There are more than a million firefighters in the United States. Volunteers comprise 70 percent of them, according to the National Volunteer Fire Council. A 2011 study shows these volunteers save the United States billions of dollars with their donated time.

Volunteer Fire Chief Harold Rohde (far right) and volunteer firefighter Jacob Koon (far left) during a fire training exercise at the Enders Fire Company in Berryville, Virginia.

While the free time people have is shrinking, the demands on volunteer firefighters are growing. Volunteers require the exact same training as career firefighters, all of it done on their own time. “We are professionals. We are unpaid professionals,” said Philip Stittleburg, a retired criminal prosecutor who is the volunteer fire chief in La Farge, Wisconsin, as well as chairman of the National Volunteer Fire Council. “The level of training is typically very similar. The level of dedication is very similar. There is not a paycheck that motivates us to do the job, but I am sure that is not the only thing that motivates the career firefighter either.”

Volunteer firefighter uniforms at the ready at the Enders Volunteer Fire Company in Berryville, Virginia.

The majority of U.S. fire departments – 20,050 out of 30,100, according to a 2012 report – are all volunteer. These are critically important in smaller communities, which rely almost entirely on volunteers. However, the number of volunteer firefighters has declined by 13 percent since 1984. Attracting young people is the biggest challenge. Volunteer firefighters are aging out of the job, according to Stittleburg, who says the median age is about 40 years old. That’s a challenge facing the Enders Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company in Berryville, Virginia. Of the handful of volunteers who gathered for a recent training session, only one was a volunteer who didn’t aspire to become a career, meaning paid, firefighter. “Typically, we get them in, we train them and they move on,” said Enders Volunteer Fire Chief Harold Rohde, a civil engineer by profession. “Hopefully, they come back.”

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[pismoe]

my DAD was volunteer . Professional is just more gov employees with a union and big wages . I go to lotsa falling down little Podunk towns and the money in those towns is in fire , police , libraries and other government offices .