Volunteer numbers at NSW Rural Fire Service drop to lowest level in a decade as Queensland loses 10,000 members in four years
The volunteer firefighter Gary Patzwald, who has fought fires for 53 years, said finding volunteers who aren’t solely “weekend warriors” was becoming increasingly difficult.
Jim Besgrove, a first officer from a brigade west of Townsville, attributes the “unprecedented” low number of volunteers to poor economic conditions and a waning culture of volunteerism.“We’ve been run off our feet for the last few months,” Besgrove said, whose brigade has relied on the help of crews from farther north to battle blazes in the area.
But the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services regional manager, Wayne Waltisbuhl, said the decline was largely an exercise in “data cleansing” rather than people walking away from brigades. Waltisbuhl and Choveaux said ageing and declining populations in rural areas were also contributing to a decline of volunteers. “We had an influx of volunteers on the back of the last 19-20 season in coastal areas,” Choveaux said.“But the influx of volunteers walking in the door were not in the same place as where people were walking out the door [in rural areas].”.
In the same period 23,239 people held full-time positions at fire service organisations, more than three-quarters of which were firefighters.
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