The fire service is drowning! That is not an opinion, but a tragic fact reflected in the loss of lives, performance, recruitment, and retention. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and there is no greater example of that than our profession.
For years, we have believed a schedule myth, ignoring the nosedive happening right in front of our faces. We tell neighbors and friends we have a dream schedule, that we work “one day on and two days off; only 10 days a month.”
Let's compare the number of hours per year for a basic civilian job and a 24/48 firefighter. If the civilian works a typical 40-hour week over 52 weeks, that comes to 2,080 workhours. The firefighter will log 2,920 work hours over the same year. It doesn't look so idyllic now, does it?
So where do those extra 838 hours per year come from?
Look no further than your pillow. We are giving up those extra hours in the form of lost sleep. And that is a dangerous trade-off. Science has a mountain of evidence proving that sleep deprivation is a huge contributing factor to obesity, heart disease, suicide, addiction, cancer, infertility, and even diseases in our children. The inability to recover from training also massively increases the chances of musculoskeletal injuries.
From a cognitive point of view, after just one sleepless night, we have the performance level of someone with a blood alcohol level of 0.1%.
That’s enough to get you arrested for drunk driving anywhere in the United States.
How many Stanley Cups or Olympic world records have been won by athletes who missed three nights of sleep that week?
In our profession, this performance decline can result in missing a child in a primary search, pushing the wrong medication, or killing a family at an intersection.
Extrapolate that over a 20-year career and you can see the immense danger when lives are at stake.
Contrary to what the recliner jockeys tout, kids these days are cut out for the fire service. Generation Z is leaning into the trades more than the generation before them. However, they also value their physical and mental health, relationships, and time off. When they look into the fire service, they see all of the beautiful things about this profession. The courageous rescues and smorgasbord of skills we are required to master.
But they also see the dark side of an undersupported profession.
The unending mandatory overtime created by mismanagement, the divorces and alcoholism held in jest by those in denial, the wall of black bands on fire service social media pages. These great candidates are turning to welding or plumbing, where they’re paid well and treated well.
We are losing an entire generation because we refuse to address what is broken.
Only 10 years ago, we competed against hundreds, if not thousands, of candidates for a handful of jobs. Today, departments are begging high school kids and offering immense signing bonuses. How far we have fallen.
But there is good news. We are seeing a revolution here in Florida. Departments are finding the courage to invest in their people and it’s paying off in spades. These agencies realized inefficient spending wasted millions that could have been reallocated. Unneeded overtime from vacancies, the cost of training recruits who leave a year or two later, the high workers’ compensation premiums, lawsuits from mistakes made by exhausted firefighters, the list goes on.
By frontloading these funds, they hired a fourth shift of firefighters, creating the 24/72 schedule; a 42-hour week.
Pasco County, Gainesville, Destin, Boynton Beach, and Kissimmee have seen a massive increase in both recruitment and retention. Their recruit classes are now full of veteran firefighters and paramedics. As they say, if you build it, they will come.
When we show young people that we care about their health and performance, we will see the demand we saw more than 10 years ago.
The rising tide lifts all ships and these thought leaders will stimulate fire service growth once more.
We don’t need any more studies or data. Both the science and firsthand observations are irrefutable. If we truly care about fireground performance and paramedic critical thinking, then we must create an environment that drives excellence and forges longevity.
