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Not just a Daddy’s Girl

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Her Dad was a fire lieutenant and her two youngest brothers (twins) joined as cadets, then volunteers and eventually became career firefighters.

But when Janet Wilmoth tried to join her local volunteer fire department, the fire chief told her to “Go home and have babies.”

She went on to do that too, but in the meantime, Janet Wilmoth took another approach to the fire service. She’s been with Fire Chief Magazine since 1986 and now leads the charge for improving the fire service as the publication’s editorial director.

I wonder if that chief has since been reminded of that famous quote: “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel!”

Join Janet and Tiger Schmittendorf, host of the Firefighter Storytellers Internet radio show live at 9pm EST on Wednesday-February 9, 2011, as Janet tells her story of growing up as a firefighter’s daughter to being a fire service leader. (more…)

Posted by on February 7, 2011 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, All Blogs, Brotherhood, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Funding & Staffing, News, Public Relations, Training & Development, training-fire-rescue-topics • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bunk-in or just “bunk”?

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Photo courtesy of www.RaisingLaddersPhotography.com

I stumbled across a new resource recently that caught my attention: FDLiveIn.com

The concept of fire station live-ins or bunk-ins, depending on what you call them, has been around for quite some time and with quite a bit of success. Different departments run their programs in different ways but the common theme is that the firefighter lives in the fire station “rent-free” in return for volunteer service. Most live-ins are students but not all, and in some departments entire families live in the fire station.

For whatever reasons, the concept has not caught on in my area of Erie County NY and I’ve always wondered why. I’ve written three articles in the past month on the live-in/bunk-in concept and it’s gaining quite a bit of attention as a potential solution to recruitment and retention challenges in the volunteer fire service.

The program has intrigued me so much that later this week I’m traveling to Hyattsville MD — home to one of the longest standing and most successful bunk in programs in the fire service — and home to the X-Box Firefighters who created FDLiveIn.com. And to get a better understanding and appreciation for the program, I’ll be bunking in the station Friday night and they’ve arranged a tour of several live-in fire stations for Saturday.

Stay tuned here, at FireRECRUITER.com, on Twitter and Facebook as I report back on my experiences. My goal is to provide you with enough photos, information and stories to allow your volunteer fire department to consider whether a bunk-in program is right for you — or if the whole concept is just ”bunk.”

PS — Doc Moltrup, Chief Emeritus of Hyattsville VFD and one of the founder’s of their now-famous bunk-in program, will be my guest on my Internet Radio Show: Firefighter Storytellers –  live from FDIC in Indianapolis the week of March 22-26, 2011. Watch Storytellers for the formal announcement of time and date of the show.

Related links:

Posted by on February 7, 2011 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, All Blogs, Brotherhood, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Funding & Staffing, R&R Toolkits, Training & Development, training-fire-rescue-topics

@FireRECRUITER: Are you flush or flushing?

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As I do with much in life, I take new experiences and new information and compare it to other aspects of my life in emergency services. Whenever it’s the least bit relevant – I try to apply it to the business I love: the fire service.

Such was the case this past week when I completed a National Fire Academy on Safety Operations and Management. I applied the process and premise of managing safety in our organizations and applied it to recruitment and retention.

While the resulting article may raise more questions than it provides answers, I hope you’ll ask yourself these same questions to assess whether or not your volunteer fire department is taking the right steps to be flush with volunteers — or needlessly flushing them and their experience away.

Click this article to read more at www.FireRECRUITER.com.

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Posted by on February 5, 2011 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, All Blogs, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Funding & Staffing, R&R Toolkits, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , ,
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