On August 20 I attend my first interim committee meeting as vice chair of the Emergency Response Service Committee. We are to study the recruitment and retention challenges related to volunteer emergency responders, including firefighters, emergency or disaster volunteers, and community emergency response team members and try to Identify strategies for encouraging volunteerism.
Volunteers provide a significant contribution to the emergency services in the state. We all know of the importance of volunteers to the operation of emergency services and we all realize the numbers of volunteers is decline in our state. The reduction in emergency service providers, coupled with the reduction in the number of volunteers, may contribute to an increased workload for the remaining providers, an increase in the size of response areas, and gaps in the availability of services.
Looking at fire department first in North Dakota we have approximately, 70,000 square miles inhabited by 780,000 thousand citizens, and 370,000 housing units. To protect this vast and largely rural population we rely on dedicated firefighters, whether volunteer, paid on-call, or full-time to respond day and night, weekday and weekend, and emergencies don’t recognize holidays. According to the fire departments that reported in 2024 we have: – 357 Fire Departments (down from 373 in 2018) o Of these fire departments there are: 334 volunteer, 14 hybrid (volunteer and full-time). 9 full-time or career, Firefighters reported in 2024 consisted of: – – 7,434 Volunteer firefighters 714 Full-time or career firefighters. Fire Department reported incidents have been increasing over recent years resulting the following numbers from 2024 that fire departments responded to: – – 51,523 incidents (up from 22,429 ten years ago) 3,078 fires (up from 1,972 ten years ago) including 890 structure fire, 572 vehicle fires 983 wildland fires – – $32,780,817.00 property loss to fire (highest on record was 2021, and resulted in $44,363,712.00 in property loss) 14 civilian lives lost (highest civilian loss on record was 2022, and resulted in 19 civilian lives lost). These numbers demonstrate that at a minimum, our fires are not decreasing, incidents fire departments respond to are increasing, and some of our most devastating years on record due to lives lost and property loss are within the last five years.
There are basically four types of ambulance services, Advanced Life Support 15(Paramedic), Basic Life Support 98(EMT’s), Quick Response Units106(not allowed to transport) and Air medical Service 6. We currently have 707 paramedics, 120 AEMT, 1757 EMT and 1202 First Responders. 78 percent of the BLS ground ambulance services have call volumes that do not exceed 150 per year. Due to the predominately rural nature of the state, there are ground ambulance services that make less than 10 responses per year.
In 2024, there were about 76000 Reponses in the state or about nine per hour. 60% of these are in our 4 largest cities. The statewide average ground ambulance service response time is just over 14 minutes, I would suggest that number is very misleading and we have much longer response even under the best circumstances. North Dakota’s EMS providers tend to be older than the average North Dakotan and roughly one-fifth are at or older than the “customary” public safety retirement age of 55. Twelve (12) percent of EMS providers are 60 years of age or older. Our EMS Workforce is aging.
Fire Departments seem to have better luck recruiting volunteers, but both our fire departments and ambulance services have trouble recruiting volunteers to do this important work. Challenges that face these services include workforce shortages, financial sustainability, large geographic area served, limited resources, age or burn out.
This is an issue that is not going away, becoming a greater demand on the EMS services, and needs to be addressed through this and other studies to identify the best solutions for North Dakota. Over the next 15 months we will try to find incentives or way to make volunteering easier and more rewarding. I will be reach out to our local ambulance services and fire departments to get there suggestions and idea on what would work in our communities to attract more volunteers to our services. Please reach out for any questions or suggestion.
Senator Don Schaible District 31