When I was growing up in Louisville, Ky., my family lived in the northeast ‘burbs of Jefferson County, just outside the city limits in an unincorporated part of the county. When it came to public safety, areas like ours typically relied on either county or local services. For our neighborhood, firefighting was local.
At the time, we were covered by the Harrods Creek Fire Department. The history is scant, but I have found references that it was a volunteer department, at least when I was growing up.
I remember the old fire station, looking like something out of the 1950s: A squat, unremarkable, rectangular, brick building with just a few bays, a fire vehicle in each bay. It basically looked like a big garage. But there were no living quarters. I always wondered where the firefighters were. As a kid, I didn’t lose sleep wondering how much time it took them to get to the fire station, and what that might mean if there was ever a fire at my house. (There never was, fortunately.)
Times have changed. The area has seen tremendous growth. And as it did, the department became a career force, staffed with full-time firefighters, and eventually merged with neighboring departments covering a larger swath of the county.
That sort of change is something that many volunteer departments in Ohio are having to seriously think about.
And there are a lot of them across the state.
According to a report from the state fire marshal, 70% of the state’s firefighting departments are (at least partially) volunteer staffed. And they are facing some significant challenges.
We live in a time where the passage of dedicated levies supporting fire services is not the sure thing it once was. And no amount of pancake breakfasts or barbecue chicken dinners is going to make up the difference.
It’s getting harder and harder to recruit new volunteers. The family tradition of serving as a volunteer firefighter is on the wane.
And the training that’s required to be a volunteer, and the support they get, may be leaving those men and women underprepared for the 21st century challenges they could encounter when they answer the call.
Consider the volunteers who showed up in February, 2023 following the derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine. They arrived to find multiple cars off the rails, some of them burning. Many of those firefighters were without the gear they needed to be truly safe in the presence of hazardous materials. What gear they did have, paid for out of their own pocket.
Just a month before the derailment, the state fire marshal released the findings of a special task force convened by Gov. Mike DeWine to quantify the challenges and come up with solutions.
That was in 2023. There’s still much work to be done. Few of the solutions have been executed.
Ideastream Public Media and The Ohio Newsroom began digging in on this project in 2024 after my former colleague, Stephanie Czekalinski (now the executive editor at Crain’s Cleveland Business) brought up the idea. Reporters Abigail Bottar, Kendall Crawford and Abbey Marshall balanced their usual daily responsibilities with digging into the data and finding and connecting with officials and experts, firefighters and departments across the state.
What our team found, spelled out in the stories they will share on public media stations and web sites across Ohio, including 89.7 WKSU, beginning Monday in "Sound the Alarm: Ohio’s Volunteer Firefighter Crisis," convey a very real sense of the past, present and future of firefighting in Ohio.
It’s something we all have a stake in … and the power to do something about.
And that brings me back to that fire station in Louisville from my childhood.
You see, that fire station, as simple as it was, was more than just our protector from catastrophe. It also served as a connection with democracy. It was also our local polling station.
On election days, officials would roll out the fire engines and roll in the voting booths.
As a kid back then, tagging along with my mom or dad as they went to vote was a really cool moment.
As an adult today, that memory is a reminder of the responsibility we all play in protecting the communities we live in.
And as a journalist, I also feel the responsibility of helping to inform the public about issues that affect their lives. We hope "Sound the Alarm" does just that.
