(Noblesville, IN) – The International Association of Fire Chiefs took the wraps off its free digital toolkit to support firefighter recruiting and retention at last week’s Indiana Fire and EMS Leadership Conference in Noblesville.
Batesville Fire Lt. Lucas Garvey attended the conference, and says the department faces challenges when it comes to recruiting and retention.
Garvey says Batesville Fire and Rescue leaders can use all of the resources and tools they can, to try and bring more people on board.
“With volunteerism, especially in the fire service, we’re not seeing the upward trends we were used to 10, 15, even 20 years ago, especially locally for us,” Garvey said. “We’re blessed – we do have a little bit of a younger aged group that is in the city, but trying to get these people to be able to get on board is a hard process.”
The technology behind the new national tool is a companion to a pre-existing Indiana-specific GIS toolkit for recruiting volunteer firefighters, which was created to support departments across the state.
Garvey adds recruiting and retention are not “one size fits all” propositions.
“We need as tools in the toolbox as we can get, so any resources like that, that can help us look at this type of problem from multiple different points and maybe come up with some solutions that we never would have thought of, departmentally, those are extremely valuable resources that we can use,” Garvey said.
