{"id":153023,"date":"2026-03-04T23:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/153023\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T23:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:00:07","slug":"new-york-state-firefighters-call-on-state-lawmakers-to-aid-volunteer-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/153023\/","title":{"rendered":"New York state firefighters call on state lawmakers to aid volunteer help"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tFire officials from across New York state were in Albany on Wednesday to call attention to what they say is a &#8220;crisis&#8221; in volunteer firefighter staffing. Fire chiefs said volunteer numbers are at their lowest level in more than 40 years. It&#8217;s why they are asking lawmakers to pass legislation that would allow compensation for mandatory on-duty fire personnel. They said it&#8217;s a necessary step to protect residents, firefighters and first responders.&#8221;Volunteering is not cheap. These folks burn their own gas running to your emergency in their car, just for example. So helping offset some of that expense that a person lays out is a plus,&#8221; Clinton County Emergency Services Director Eric Day said. &#8220;Generally speaking, in my experience, people that volunteer are willing to forgo that or overlook it. However, if we need to recruit or recruit additional people because we&#8217;re not getting the numbers that we used to from the same avenues, we need to maybe entice them with some financial benefit.&#8221;If you would like to volunteer, you can contact your local fire department.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tALBANY, N.Y. \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Fire officials from across New York state were in Albany on Wednesday to call attention to what they say is a &#8220;crisis&#8221; in volunteer firefighter staffing. <\/p>\n<p>Fire chiefs said volunteer numbers are at their lowest level in more than 40 years. It&#8217;s why they are asking lawmakers to pass legislation that would allow compensation for mandatory on-duty fire personnel. <\/p>\n<p>They said it&#8217;s a necessary step to protect residents, firefighters and first responders.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Volunteering is not cheap. These folks burn their own gas running to your emergency in their car, just for example. So helping offset some of that expense that a person lays out is a plus,&#8221; Clinton County Emergency Services Director Eric Day said. &#8220;Generally speaking, in my experience, people that volunteer are willing to forgo that or overlook it. However, if we need to recruit or recruit additional people because we&#8217;re not getting the numbers that we used to from the same avenues, we need to maybe entice them with some financial benefit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If you would like to volunteer, you can contact your local fire department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fire officials from across New York state were in Albany on Wednesday to call attention to what they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4241,16997,32,18445,19986,63680,195,13879,63687,6944,20131,9,63681,11,10,49,63684,51,50,12,1232,18050,63683,63686,42660,63682,63685,23266,6951],"class_list":{"0":"post-153023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-albany","9":"tag-compensation","10":"tag-emergency","11":"tag-fire-chief","12":"tag-fire-official","13":"tag-firefighter-volunteers","14":"tag-firefighters","15":"tag-first-responder","16":"tag-mandatory-on-duty-fire-personnel","17":"tag-nbc-5","18":"tag-nbc-5-news","19":"tag-new-york","20":"tag-new-york-firefighters","21":"tag-new-york-headlines","22":"tag-new-york-news","23":"tag-new-york-state","24":"tag-new-york-state-firefighter","25":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","26":"tag-new-york-state-news","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-people","29":"tag-resident","30":"tag-state-lawmaker","31":"tag-volunteer-firefighter-staffing","32":"tag-volunteer-firefighters","33":"tag-volunteer-help","34":"tag-volunteer-number","35":"tag-wednesday","36":"tag-wptz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}