More than half of state’s firefighters untrained: study

One of the biggest hurdles, particularly for rural fire departments, is that most firefighting volunteers have careers and commitments that interfere with training, officials said. The departments also are underequipped, according to the study by the County Technical Assistance Service of the University of Tennessee.

More than 50 percent of communities are rated 8, 9 or 10 for fire protection by the Insurance Services Organization. Ten is the equivalent of not having any fire protection, the study said.

The 10-month assessment of fire service across the state, published as the Tennessee County Fire Handbook, was conducted by Kevin Lauer, a former fire chief in Williamson County.

“This publication is not in any way designed to throw blame,” Lauer told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “Its a baseline of where we are at now and how in the next 10 years we can make some improvements.”

Tennessee ranks among the worst in the nation in fire deaths.

Surveys were sent to all 95 county mayors and to 654 fire chiefs of both volunteer and paid departments. About 51 percent of the fire chiefs responded, Lauer said.

Among the findings:

— More than one-third of the departments do not have an appointed training officer.

— The average age of a tanker firetruck is 20 years old.

— Funding for fire protection is low across the state.

Lauer said the results were not surprising.

“Our assumption is if more of these were returned, a lot of the statistics, in my opinion, would be worse. The actual representation is a little more negative than what is actually published,” he said.

Paula Wade, a spokeswoman for the state fire marshal’s office, said Tennessee is a mostly rural state with a low tax base that traditionally has relied on volunteer fire departments. “To the extent you load certain requirements of training on these volunteer firefighters, you run the risk of closing some of these folks down,” she said.

However, Tennessee has a two-year-old state fire academy in Bell Buckle that provides low-cost training on flexible schedules for volunteer and paid firefighters, Wade said. As a convenience, academy instructors will travel to volunteer fire departments to conduct training.

Paul West, chief of the Jasper Volunteer Fire Department, said that’s a good idea.

“There is a little bit of an incentive to have an outside instructor come in,” he said. “It draws more people. Its a curiosity.”

West, a former fire instructor in the Air Force, said attracting and retaining volunteers is his biggest challenge.

“Along with that goes the training,” he said. “Everybody works. Their wives work, and theyve got kids who play ball. Even if I get volunteers, the training time is very limited.”