GOLDEN —Golden Fire Department has 90 volunteers, a rarity among municipal departments, which typically have a staff of career firefighters.
“We have 30 active volunteers right now that are full-time firefighters with career departments in the Denver metro area,” said John Bales, Golden’s fire chief.
But the success in numbers comes with challenges in scheduling and training such a force. For that, the department recently added three new full-time staff firefighter positions in addition to the small, paid administrative staff (which includes the chief).
An open administrative position about a year ago opened the door for the change. Bales said the department worked for more than a year developing the “shift officer” positions and gaining the support of the city, which funds the department.
“It’s far exceeded the expectations that I think were going to happen,” Bales said of the addition of three full-time shift officers.
Like many volunteer districts, Golden was seeing low numbers in resident volunteers. So in 2007, it opened up to volunteers from outside the city.
It now attracts individuals wanting to establish their training for a future career in firefighting, or career firefighters who want to give time to a long-standing, strong department.
Bales credits the department’s success to its advanced training programs, which cover the wide variety of incidents it handles, from swift-water rescue to wildfires and complex traffic incidents.
Although the department had many volunteers, there was a lack of consistency with when the nonresident volunteers were available to serve 36 hours a month, usually in three 12-hour shifts.
Now that’s changed and the department always has one of the three new shift officers on duty to schedule firefighters, train, drive to calls, take command of an incident or even go out for inspections.
“More people have been willing to sign up on shifts just because they know they’re not going to be alone now,” said Jeff Hulse, one of the shift officers. “At least now that there’s going to be someone always here, people are going to sign up.”
If a call went out when few or no volunteers were scheduled, it meant extra response time to allow for volunteers to report to the station.
The new staff could improve that response time.
The department’s rating with the Insurance Services Office — which can play into homeowners insurance rates — is a 4 out of 10 on a scale where 1 is the best ranking. Bales said the department improved from class 5 about 10 years ago and is due for a new evaluation soon. The improvements in response times could edge it into the higher class.
“But with all of the changes that have happened in the last 10 years including the shift officers, we could possibly see a change to a Class 3,” he said.
Hulse, who was a volunteer before being hired for the position, said there were concerns at first as to how the new staff would integrate into the department that had been volunteer-based for 136 years.
“We all had a big question mark in our mind about how it was going to go,” he said. “When you have strictly volunteer base, to know some of your brothers and sisters are getting a paycheck, how is it going to go?”
The volunteers have been receptive to the change and they actually appreciate the organization and leadership.
“I think the biggest thing is it’s just given us a lot of uniform consistency with our shifts, with trainings and policies,” said Jason Flickner, who got his start as a volunteer with Golden Fire eight years ago. “Instead of working a bunch of random volunteer lieutenants, you know who to expect and what they expect of you.”
Flickner is now a career paramedic engineer with Boulder Rural Fire Department. He remains a volunteer with Golden, he said, because he loves the community and the variety of calls the department gets.
He said: “I just wanted to continue to volunteer here to give back to this department and community for what they gave me.”
Josie Klemaier: 303-954-2465, jklemaier@denverpost.com or
