There’s a national volunteer firefighter shortage. It’s on display in Wyoming

If a house catches on fire, someone calls 911 and hopes a full fire crew comes out as fast as possible.

But what some might not realize? Those firefighters are likely unpaid volunteers: Firefighting is not their day job.

This is the case for well over half of the nation’s firefighters, and the number of people willing to volunteer is declining. Total numbers have dropped by about 200,000 over the last couple decades. Almost every state has a shortage.

The rural West

Outside a fire hall in Sublette County, Wyoming, six seasoned volunteers gathered for their semi-monthly training. Instructor Justin Hamilton stood alongside a miniature, unpainted wooden house propped up on saw horses.

“This is a two-story dollhouse, essentially a two bedroom. The bedrooms are upstairs,” he said.

A volunteer in his brown and yellow uniform grabbed the nearby torch.

“I'm going to go ahead and have Eric go ahead and ignite it, and we will let it build up,” Hamilton said.

Smoke billowed. Eric opened and closed the doors to simulate different flows of fire for the group.

“So with a fire like this, how many people do we got to have to go inside?” Hamilton asked.

The numbers four, five, and six were tossed around.

“Ideally six,” Hamilton said. “You've got four. Can you go inside? No. What can you do? External. Hit it hard from the yard.”

This is a real scenario they practice for. When asked if the crew has changed their strategy because of a lack of firefighters? It was a resounding yes.

The shortage

One of the reasons it’s hard to get enough firefighters on the scene: It takes a while to get anywhere in Sublette County. The western Wyoming county is about the size of Connecticut.

Plus, sometimes the volunteers are busy with their day job.

“Ya know, I might not make that call because I’m out doing something, or I’m [on] horseback,” said Jason Rife, a local rancher. “If I'm [on] horseback, then I'm not making the call.”

So Rife needs other firefighters to back him up. Ideally, the county needs 100 volunteers.

“We need a lot of redundancy, which is why the numbers need to be so big,” Rife said.

But they’re short about 20.

“If we don't have volunteers, we're pretty much sunk as a county,” he said. “There's no one coming if you don't volunteer to do this.”

Volunteers are the only way the vast majority of fire departments in the country can afford to do their work. Steve Hirsch, chair of the National Volunteer Fire Council, has spent a lot of time thinking about this.

“The volunteer fire service is saving billions,” Hirsch said. “I'm talking about billions with a B – billions of dollars for the taxpayers of this nation.”

Nationally, total volunteer firefighter numbers are down about 25% since 2008.

“There's just so many demands on people's time,” Hirsch said. “I think that's our problem,”

Possible solutions

These days, many people who might otherwise volunteer are working a couple jobs to make ends meet, while trying to keep gas in their cars and afford childcare. Plus, volunteers have to make time for mandatory training.

Joe Maruca, retired fire chief in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, said it was especially hard to recruit young volunteers.

“The economics of today's world, and the lifestyle of the 20-something in today's world, doesn't allow this stagnant approach” like requiring strict training schedules, Maruca said.

So Maruca had to get flexible to bring more people on board — which meant keeping odd hours.

“I'm getting phone calls from people, ‘Why is the fire truck driving around town at 8:30 at night? What are you doing? What's what's wrong?’ I said, ‘Nothing. They're just practicing.’”

Over a couple decades, Maruca doubled the size of his team.

There are other recruiting ideas out there. New laws in Wyoming pay state employees for 24 hours of leave to fight fire and give all volunteers access to state health insurance. In Sublette County, after a focus on recruiting, they are still short, but no longer declining.

The newest recruit? Luke Nagle. He is 16 years old and is two months into the local cadet program.

“It's not too hard because I can't make it to most of the calls because of, like, school and stuff, and then some of the calls I'm just not allowed to go on,” Nagle said.

When he completes his training and is 18, he will be fighting fire with the rest of the Sublette County crew.

Editor’s Note: Marketplace’s Kristin Schwab contributed to this reporting.