EASTON, Pa. – Staffing shortages continue to plague fire departments around the region.<\/p>\n
A fire chief in Northampton County says departments can face serious risks without the proper staffing on scene of an emergency.<\/p>\n
“You run the risk of loss of life,” said City of Easton Fire Chief Henry Hennings.<\/p>\n
When The Hotel Hampton in downtown Easton burst into flames in February, Hennings says firefighters responded immediately, with additional help from mutual aid.<\/p>\n
“That brought three more people to the people that we had on staff, for a total of 15. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standard for that type of occupancy, and that size building was 49 firefighters,” said Hennings.<\/p>\n
Hennings says there are several tasks for every first responder required during a fire scene, especially coordinated efforts and specific staffing levels.<\/p>\n
“When a fire comes in and you have no idea when that’s going to happen, you show up and people’s lives are at risk,” said Hennings. “You need X amount of firefighters to do a job in order to do it correctly.”<\/p>\n
That goes for all career and volunteer departments.<\/p>\n
Budget constraints and tax revenue are key factors in determining the number of staff, according to Hennings.<\/p>\n
He says in areas of the country, departments have gone to county-wide fire and EMS departments, to help the funding burden.<\/p>\n
“So like all our local municipalities around us, Forks Township, Palmer Township, Bethlehem Township, they’ve all recently initiated a fire tax to fund the portions of the fire department,” said Hennings.<\/p>\n
Fire officials in the region say the lack of firefighters continues well beyond the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
“The shortage of firefighters is an exponential,” said Hennings.<\/p>\n
The International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) is launching a national volunteer firefighter recruitment campaign. It’s in an effort to gather the next generation of firefighters.<\/p>\n
Residents are encouraged to contact their local fire departments for volunteer opportunities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. – Staffing shortages continue to plague fire departments around the region. A fire chief in Northampton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,805],"class_list":["post-160978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-lehighvalley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}