HENRIETTA, N.Y. \u2014 New York State kicked off its annual volunteer firefighter recruitment campaign Wednesday as state and local fire officials work to address a statewide shortage.<\/p>\n
News10NBC\u2019s Garrett Chan reported from the Henrietta Fire District, where officials highlighted the severity of the volunteer shortage. There are currently about 80,000 volunteer firefighters statewide. However, the state lost about 40,000 volunteers within the past 20 years, FASNY\u00a0Director Andrew Pilecki said.<\/p>\n
The campaign has aimed to combat that decline since 2011. A 2024 FASNY survey found about 49% of New Yorkers showed a strong interest in volunteering.<\/p>\n
\u201cI use the analogy the more hands you have, the lighter the work,\u201d Pilecki said. \u201cAnd that proves both at the fire station or on the fire ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state implemented incentives to attract volunteer firefighters, ranging from a $200 tax credit, a 10% property tax reduction and covered training costs. Despite these perks, officials warn of the job\u2019s physical and mental costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudents coming out of Firefighter One, it\u2019s much closer to 140 hours just to be able to get in the door and be able to start treating those people,\u201d Henrietta Fire Chief Mark Cholach said.<\/p>\n
Cholach said the Henrietta Fire Company has transitioned to a combination department, having both volunteers and career staff on standby.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now we\u2019re running about 44% of the time,\u201d Cholach said. \u201cWe are running multiple incidents at once and there\u2019s only so much staffing that an agency can add before you start requesting mutual aid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlie Remelt is the captain at the Henrietta Fire District. He said so far, the district has been holding its own with volunteers, but it\u2019s always looking for more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels really good to know that you\u2019re helping people along with everyone else that comes in and out of the town on a daily basis,\u201d Remelt said.<\/p>\n
The Henrietta Fire District is one of many volunteer fire departments holding recruitment events and open houses this weekend. For a list of fire departments participating, visit here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n RELATED:<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0volunteer fire departments<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Henrietta Fire District<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Fire department volunteer shortage<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HENRIETTA, N.Y. \u2014 New York State kicked off its annual volunteer firefighter recruitment campaign Wednesday as state and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[63670,79124,9,11,10,39185],"class_list":["post-198631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-fire-department-volunteer-shortage","tag-henrietta-fire-district","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-volunteer-fire-departments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198631","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=198631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}