Fire Engines Photos

Garden City is the only fire department in Nassau County Long Island to have full time firefighters.

All of the other 190 or so in the county are entirely volunteer.

But even Garden City has only a small full time force, and relies on volunteers to fill out the full first alarm personnel assignment. This lengthy preamble explains why this ladder has such a large crew cab! Sometimes enough bodies respond to fill up every seat....

Added by Rob Johnson on 14 September 2017.

A few months ago Garden City paid $1, 100, 000 in severance pay to dismiss their twelve full time firefighters. It was obvious that having three or occasionally four full time personnel on duty 24/7 was not adding significantly to the level or timeliness of response in this City of 23, 000 inhabitants.

The now all volunteer force operates three engines, two aerials and a single heavy rescue squad truck out of three fire stations.

Added by Rob Johnson on 21 April 2019.

The town currently has four chiefs, two captains, four lieutenants and around 100 firefighters on its active volunteer roster, with a minimum of three officers and twenty additional personnel available at short notice to respond to any alarm. Based on their location, some respond to their base fire station to drive and/ or ride on the pumpers, aerials and/ or rescue, while others have their gear in their own vehicles (which are equipped with blue lights) and respond directly to the address of the incident if this is quicker.

Units are dispatched either by calling the central station directly or by calling the Nassau county emergency dispatch number, which is 911 - as uniformly the case across the USA.

As the entire response area is just over five square miles, response times tend to be quite short from all three fire stations.

Added by Rob Johnson on 04 February 2023.

New York State has 1549 volunteer fire companies with 81231 members, in addition to 91 career fire departments (excluding FDNY) with 6944 full time firefighters. A recent study indicated that this structure saves the taxpayers $4.7 billion a year in payroll and benefits expense, which would otherwise require a 28% increase in annual property taxes. In addition, these volunteer companies own more than $8 billion of assets together, including fire stations, vehicles and equipment. All of this would need to have been bought with taxpayer funds too….

Although there are variations as between locations, many also provide all or some local EMS capabilities in addition to fire and rescue duties. This model is very similar to most other US states, as well as many South American, Canadian and European fire services, where unpaid volunteers represent 75% to 95% of all operational fire fighting staffs. It is interesting to see a quantified example of the cost saving efficiency of this type of structure.

Added by Rob Johnson on 22 March 2023.

To put this study into a clearer context, the NY state population without New York City is 16 million. This means there is one volunteer fire company for every 10,330 citizens, although of course many are already protected by the 91 full time paid departments instead. Each volunteer company has an average of 52 active members, which implies a typical first alarm response of around twelve to eighteen riders. Based on population, the same structure in the UK would provide for around 350 full time fire brigades and about 6000 volunteer fire stations! Not a lot compared to Germany's 20,000 - but still quite a few more than a full paid fire brigade structure provides...

Added by Rob Johnson on 24 March 2023.

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