An ongoing shortage of volunteer firefighters has reached a critical level that could lead to delayed response times to emergencies, and, potentially, departments being unable to respond to any urgent calls, according to six South Jersey fire chiefs.
CBS News Philadelphia spoke to the chiefs as part of a 15-month examination into the challenges volunteer fire departments are facing in recruiting new firefighters.
Winslow Township Fire Chief Marc Rigberg prompted the examination after he challenged CBS News Philadelphia to dive deeper into the topic after a reporter interviewed him in May 2024 about his department closing three fire stations due to a lack of volunteers.
“This has been an ongoing challenge, definitely in the last 10 years or so,” Rigberg said. “Specifically, I think it’s really hit hard over the last five years.”
Statewide, New Jersey has seen about a 20% drop in volunteers, declining from more than 30,000 volunteers in 2010 to just under 25,000 by the end of 2024, according to the state’s Department of Community Affairs.
Within individual departments, some of the numbers plunged significantly.
“In 2005, I happened to run the numbers this morning, Pennsauken had 150 volunteer members,” Pennsauken Fire Chief Jonathan Hutton said. “Today, we have 16 [volunteers].”
The impacts of those numbers are having real-world impacts.
CBS News Philadelphia
Logan Township Fire Chief Scott Oatman recalled a January 2019 fire at an industrial building when the first fire truck didn’t arrive for 27 minutes.
“[The] property damage was pretty extensive on that fire,” Oatman said. “That caused the business association to lift an eyebrow and say, ‘Hey, what’s going on? We pay a lot of taxes, and we need a good service.'”
All six chiefs agreed that lawmakers, community leaders and the chiefs themselves need to take decisive actions to stop the decline, but they warned some of those decisions could be expensive.
“We are here to serve. We will continue to serve to the best of our abilities,” Rigberg said. “That’s what the fire service is built on for the past hundreds of years. But we need help.”
Tick tock to train
In firefighting, time is of the essence, both in emergencies and in the training needed to become a firefighter.
But the six fire chiefs said the training requirements to become a firefighter have gotten longer, while the free time people have to accumulate that training has gotten shorter.
“People working two, three, four-income households, and children’s sports, they don’t really have the time to go to the fire academy,” Westmont Fire Chief Dan Devitt said.
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New Jerseyans interested in becoming firefighters must first go through “Firefighter 1,” a 180-200-hour training course.
Afterwards, many have to do another 70 to 80 hours of training before they can enroll in more specialized courses focusing on technical rescues or emergency care.
It’s led to uncomfortable discussions about whether the end of the volunteer firefighter is near.
“Eventually, it’s going to come to fruition where there’s not going to be any volunteers left,” Oatman said, “and we might not answer that call.”
Hybrid vs. volunteer
Several fire departments in South Jersey have already made the transition from “all-volunteer” departments to “hybrid” models, which consist of both volunteers and paid staff members.
Following the 2019 industrial building fire, Logan Township added career staff members during the day to support its volunteers.
Winslow Township made a similar transition, and one of its newest career firefighters, John Ioannucci, began training with the department last autumn.
Before becoming a paid firefighter, Ioannucci volunteered at a different South Jersey department.
“Volunteering is a great way to give back to your community and feel like you’re a part of something,” Ioannucci said.
“A small thank you”
Democratic Assemblymember Cody Miller represents parts of Camden, Gloucester and Atlantic counties in the New Jersey General Assembly. He’s also a volunteer firefighter.
“I saw first-hand what our volunteers do every single day,” Miller said. “What I see right now in the state of New Jersey is that there’s not a lot of incentives for volunteer first responders.”
Miller has introduced legislation to give volunteers a 15% property tax reduction and a tax credit of up to $500.
“It’s a small thing that we can do to say, ‘thank you for your service,'” Miller said. “It’s also something that we can do to ensure that we’re keeping our volunteers.”
Age is just a number
Some departments, like Washington Township, can only keep their passionate volunteers for so long.
Lt. Jim Connor spent the last 49 years serving as a volunteer firefighter.
“You will not receive more of a personal benefit of knowing and feeling that you’re part of something important,” Connor said. “You’re giving back to your community, and you’re helping people.”
Jim Connor
But Connor can’t help his age.
“Seventy-four days, not that I’m counting,” Connor told CBS News Philadelphia in February 2025. “Seventy-four days, and I’ll hit 65 [years old].”
Washington Township firefighters must retire from the department once they turn 65.
“Kind of melancholy,” Connor said. “When you join at 16, you don’t think about leaving, and all of the years that you are serving, and the people that you’ve served with, you don’t think about that coming to an end at some point.”
Yet those emergency calls never end, and as older firefighters, like Connor, step down, they need other, younger volunteers to step up and serve their communities.
Washington Township Fire Department
Aurie Najd, 19, and Javier Rodriguez, 18, stepped up to answer the call for Washington Township.
“It’s amazing,” Rodriguez said. “Adrenaline’s running, and this is what I’m trained to do.”
Najd added, “I’ll be honest, there are some calls that I still get scared on, and I think that’s totally normal.”
What also worries Najd is that many others who are his age are not volunteering.
“It’s upsetting. I wish more people would volunteer,” Najd said. “It’s a really great thing. I think one of the biggest problems is it’s a commitment.”
Rigberg warned that soon, everyone will have to make some form of commitment to solve the ongoing shortage.
“To be blunt about it, we can either pony up people who want to be volunteer firefighters,” Rigberg said. “Or one day I’m going to need you to pony up money so I can go hire more firefighters.”
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