By Rita Shirley LeBleu
Local fire departments are doing more with fewer volunteers. That’s the message Ward 6 Fire Chief Todd Parker shared with the Rotary Club of DeQuincy on Thursday, Mar. 5.
Parker joined the DeQuincy and Ward Six volunteer fire departments as soon as he turned 18, not long after Ward 6 was established. He has been witness to big changes since that time. For example, there were 80 calls per unit in 1991 and 58 volunteers.
Last year, the number of calls was up to 394. The number of volunteers is down to 18.
“One of the things I see in the future is, we’re going to have to re-imagine volunteer fire protection,” he said.
Numbers aren’t just down here. “Eighty-two percent of the USA is protected by volunteer fire departments,” Parker told Rotarians. “In the last 40 years, the number of volunteers has dropped from 808,200 to 635, according to the National Volunteer Fire Council.”
Parker said it has become necessary to supplement staffing with full-time firefighters from other departments.
Despite volunteer shortages and the growing number and type of incidents to which firefighters now respond – wrecks, chemical spills and more – response time is 7.2 minutes. The national average of all volunteer and all-paid departments serving rural and metropolitan areas is 11 minutes.
More training and training together once a month, as Ward 6, Houston River and City of DeQuincy Fire Departments do, has been advantageous. Because they train together, a Ward 6 person can be part of a Houston River or City of DeQuincy crew for example. These days, those three departments automatically assist each other. There was a time when a fire department might only show up if the fire was in their area.
The 394 calls answered in 2025 by Ward Six involved protecting property valued at over $7 million dollars.
“We only had a property loss of $804,000 in our district last year,” Parker said, explaining the relationship between property loss, audits, ratings and property insurance costs.
Funding isn’t available to hire more full-time employees, Parker said. Four individuals are needed per response: One person on the truck, one person in command and two firefighters. Parker would like to see more than four.
To read the rest of this story, please see page four of the print edition of The DeQuincy News.
