Nationwide volunteer crisis hits Libby

Finding volunteers for the Libby Volunteer Fire Department and the Volunteer Ambulance has become increasingly difficult over the past few years, reflecting the nationwide trend. While Libby’s fire department is doing well for now, the ambulance is suffering from a steady decrease in volunteers.

“Young people either need to start getting involved or it’s going to fail,” LVA’s Penny Kyes said.

Kyes has been with LVA for 22 years, since then she’s witnessed volunteer numbers decrease from 53 volunteers in the mid-1990s to just 17 today.

As of now, they’re still able to staff the ambulance, but according to Kyes, they are four people away from disaster.

The volunteer ambulance covers 650 calls per year, almost two a day.

Theoretically, the volunteers are on call all of the time, but realistically, Kyes said, they have two people on.

Kyes said that the first thing to fail would be transports.

Over the last few years, their calls for transports from the Care Center, law enforcement and hospice have increased, and they’re struggling to keep up with demand.

Kyes said that this is the second year in her 22 year history that they’ve started saying ‘no’ to some of their transports out of Cabinet Peaks Medical Center.

“What we are looking at now is if they are unnecessary, unreasonable or if we don’t have enough staff,” she said; unnecessary meaning if the insurance companies would deem it unnecessary and unreasonable meaning if the patient is cleared and they could be transferred by another way.

The ambulance also does transports for the Care Center, police and hospice during medical emergencies.

They’ve been a transport service for all of these years but the pace has increased.

In 2014, they had 54 calls, in 2015 they had 117 and as of September, 2016 the numbers already totalled 114 according to Kyes. As of five years ago, they raised hourly pay for transports from $7 to $25 just to keep volunteers.

“We’re the easy button for all other agencies and right now we’re suffering,” Kyes said. “We cannot just continue to be everybody’s solution. We’re not designed to be a transport service we’re designed to be a 911 service.”

Kyes said even if they could afford to hire another paid position, they would have to move EMT’s in from out of town.

Switching from an entirely volunteer resource to a paid resource would cost upwards of several million dollars, Kyes said.

The ambulance is many years from going out of business, Kyes said, but they’re attitude about collections may change. If things get worse for the LVA, they may need to switch to a pay-it-forward system, similar to Troy Volunteer Ambulance.

News out of the volunteer ambulance isn’t all bad. In Dec., 2015, they paid off their building and they also purchased a rescue truck which is completely owned and operated by the ambulance crew — both paid for without one tax dollar spent.

They recently elected a new president, Jeff Holder, last Thursday. They have also recently hired a new training officer, Chad Rebo, and will start a class in March at their building.

WHILE THE FIRE DEPARTMENT is doing fine as of now, they are aware of the shortage and are bracing for future retirements.

Ryan Andreesen is president of the fire department executive board and he’s in charge of recruitment.

“Were OK so far,” Andreesen said. “We’re pretty fortunate that we got a good group of people. It’s always hard to find people that are willing to sacrifice their time for the volunteer. As people retire it’s getting harder and harder to find recruits.”

The Montana State Fire Chief’s Association says there’s an extreme shortage in volunteer-run fire departments. Four hundred of the the state’s 435 fire departments are volunteer-run. A FEMA grant helped the MSFCA launch an ad campaign featuring members on billboards and media pages along with an updated website.

As of now, the Libby fire department is seeing a balance between retirements and new recruits. In 2016, they had more than two retirements, and in 2015 they had three. A lot of their volunteers have 20 plus years volunteering.

If someone wanted to apply to become a volunteer firefighter, they could get an application from one of the members themselves or from the firehall. Once they submit their application, the department will look at a different criteria before deciding to take on the new recruit.

Bethany Rolfson is a reporter at The Western News and can be reached by phone at 293-4124 or by email at reporter@thewesternnews.com.