A Deeper Look at the Challenges Marshall County Fire Departments Face
TRACY HARRIS Staff Writer
How Marshall County Operates
Firefighters face many challenges in rural areas like ours- staffing shortages, longer response times, lack of funding, and lack of volunteers. We know that is the case everywhere now, but in a fire department, it could be the difference between life and death.
Marshall County is 376 square miles with 34,318 people (2020 census) and three major cities – Cornersville, Chapel Hill, and Lewisburg, each with their own fire department. Lewisburg is the only staffed fire department in the county. That means we rely heavily on volunteer fire departments. Here, each volunteer fire department is set up as an individual 501(c)(3). Our volunteer based ones are: South Marshall, Belfast, Farmington, Berlin, Moorseville, Five Points, Chapel Hill and Cornersville.
The county does not have a fire department and we are one of the last counties in Tennessee set up this way. A few fire chiefs in the county have pushed to incorporate, but there are hurdles – mostly revolving around funding and control. Each VFD raises their own money and has their own board of directors and they would have to give that up to incorporate; so far, not many want to. In order to incorporate to a county system, there would have to be support from county leadership; so far, that is minimal too.
Residential growth does not necessarily mean a town will have a staffed fire department. Having a staffed fire department is based on call volume, not population, and this is where some residents get confused. According to Fox, Chapel Hill is very close to having the call volume to have a full-time paid staff and will likely have 2 people on staff.
Matt Fox is chief over South Marshall and Cornersville in addition to working full-time at the Lewisburg Fire Department. He believes Marshall County has taken steps in the right direction, but we, like many others across the country, are not at full operations.
The EMA office (like FEMA, but local) took steps to be recognized as a fire department. This lets EMA operate as a centralized support system for the entire county in order to do all rescues – special rescue, search and rescue, confined space, hazmat, trench, and extrication. “With multiple fire departments here, it wouldn’t make sense for all of those fire departments to have their own teams, so EMA does it for the whole county,” Fox explained.
Staffing Shortages
What does this shortage of staff and volunteers mean when there is a large structure fire? Fox said, “That depends on the day, the time of day, and what truck is there. If it’s during the day, during the week, and during normal working hours, you’re probably not going to get much of a response. It’s scary. The people in the county don’t realize how scary it really is.”
South Marshall Fire Department is down to five members right now. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) suggests 16 on scene of a residential structure fire scene. That means they are 11 short of NFPA’s recommendation. Fox said, “It’s not law, it’s a standard. But, if something goes to court, you can guarantee they’re going to throw NFPA at you.” Fox explained that even the largest fire department in the nation, Los Angeles, cannot be 100% compliant because it is financially and fiscally impossible.
Longer Response Times
Response times are longer in the county versus inside city limits. Fox said, “In South Marshall there are places that have a 20 minute response time from the station and the volunteers are not sitting at that station. Once we get the page, we have to stop whatever we’re doing, go to the station, get the truck, and then go to the scene. If somebody’s inside that house we’re not saving them. We cannot save ‘em.”
Lack of Volunteers
Over the years, Fox has interviewed many potential recruits that express an interest in volunteering, but “Their reaction to the minimum training pretty much tells the full story. Many are under the impression they can just volunteer without training and go fight fires,” Fox said. In Tennessee, a volunteer must have 16 hours of training before they can even go on scene. Fox and others here are certified to teach the 16 hour “Introduction to Fire and Emergency Services” course. In an effort to get more volunteers, they hold training courses during nights and weekends. “It’s basically one weekend, 8 hours on Saturday and 8 hours on a Sunday and you can have that 16 hour minimum training done,” said Fox.
There is an additional 64 hour “Basic Firefighter” course in order to be an interior firefighter and one must go to the academy in Bell Buckle to participate in a live burn. Firefighter 1 certification comes after all these certifications are done. “From there,” Fox said, “there’s a wide range of different directions one can go: engineer, officer, inspector, or an investigator.” Tennessee is part of the International Fire Service Accreditation Congress (IFSAC) which is a national certification. So, once a firefighter gets that certification, they can go pretty much anywhere in the country and transfer all certifications.
Lack of Funding
Fire departments must turn in receipts proving they raised at least $5,000 through fundraising if they want the county to match up to $5,000. There are also grants available. The biggest one is the Assistance to Firefighters Grants (AFG) through FEMA but there are many stipulations and requirements. Fox said that they’re “lucky to get a truck every five years if you applied every single year. The competition on that grant is very, very high.”
The truth of the situation according to Fox is, “The delayed response because of lack of manpower, or distance, or funding, or whatever it may be, has definitely cost lives. Part of the problem is, the people who have to make the decision to change things, it has not happened to them. Everyone on this side of it knows, but until it happens to them, nothing is going to change.”
There answer to solving the problem will not involve single approach. It involves tackling it from all angles, much like firefighters do when they arrive on scene – completely trained to do the job at hand, fully aware of what is going on, all hands on deck, and with all the tools ready and functioning properly. Marshall County is not unique in its rural fire department issues.
