ST. JOHNSBURY — Town officials say they’d consider consolidating fire services around the area to combat regional staffing woes.
“I think that that’s certainly something to explore,” St. Johnsbury Fire Chief Jon Bouffard said Monday about combining services in Caledonia County.
Fire departments around the area are having trouble maintaining their staff numbers, Bouffard told the St. Johnsbury Selectboard that night, including his own.
His department has nine full-time firefighters, one fire marshal, a chief and eight call members — firefighters brought in to help during emergencies — “of which five are relatively reliable,” he said.
He said the Insurance Services Office, a company that rates community fire services to help insurers calculate premiums, had “dinged” his department’s rating because of staffing levels.
Town Manager Chad Whitehead said that before Bouffard was hired last year, he had met with fire officials from other towns and discussed problems they faced.
“My takeaway from that meeting was, recruitment and filling their staff is a challenge for all fire departments,” Whitehead said. “Training levels are increased. Time commitments are fairly exceptional. One of the things we talked about is if we were all sharing our staffs.”
Whitehead said he had discussed the concept with Bouffard and others, too, and wondered, “If we all are dealing with the same problem, can we all come together to find … a solution?”
Bouffard said the department also needs to examine its mutual-aid system — how many resources it sends to other agencies and how many it receives from them.
Firefighting standards for commercial buildings from the National Fire Protection Association, an international nonprofit, require at least 27 personnel to adequately respond to a fire at an open-air strip mall.
“A: We don’t have 27 people,” Bouffard said. “B: How many people outside of us are we going to get?”
A handful of neighboring departments have had luck recruiting and retaining firefighters, he said, and he’s been working with them to understand why.
Consolidating services isn’t a foreign idea, the chief said. “Our ambulance services do it every day,” he said.
Selectboard member Timothy Angell said the town should explore regionalizing fire services.
“We’ve talked about recruitment and manpower — you have surrounding towns with 20 to 30 people on their rosters, but they’re still not answering daytime calls,” Angell said. “St. Johnsbury’s gone to some of these surrounding towns because they can’t answer a call, which in turn costs our taxpayers money.”
“We gotta start looking at different options,” he added.
“I agree,” Selectboard Chair Kevin Oddy replied.
