WANTED: ORDINARY PEOPLE

Rebuilding base: $686,000 grant from FEMA to recruit volunteer firefighters

ABINGTON >> Abington resident Ron Griffith, a 20-year New York City police veteran, is among the newest members of the Edgehill Fire Company and, undoubtedly, the oldest to be certified. Griffith is 60.

One of several firefighters and officials who spoke at the Nov. 14 kickoff of a four-year, $686,000 Montgomery County Fire Chief’s Association campaign to recruit and retain volunteer firefighters, Griffith is a shining example of the new outreach effort’s tagline, “Ordinary People. Trained for the Extraordinary.”

A former member of the NYC Emergency Services Unit — “our version of SWAT” — during the 9/11 terrorist attack, where, he said, he “lost my sergeant and 23 other guys I know,” Griffith said, “Anyone who decides to serve is extraordinary.”

“Tonight marks a new beginning in Montgomery County as we work to rebuild our base of volunteer firefighters,” said Montgomery County Fire Chiefs As

sociation President George Wilmot.

The kickoff begins an aggressive campaign to recruit 400 volunteer firefighters, utilizing the $686,000 grant acquired from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund an awareness and recruitment effort for every fire department in Montgomery County.

Mirroring a nationwide shortage, “in Pennsylvania the number of volunteer firefighters has shrunk from 300,000 in the 1970s to 38,000 is 2018,” Wilmot, the Flourtown Fire Company assistant chief, said.

As the majority of firefighters in the more than 80 fire companies in Montgomery County are volunteers, this puts the county, the third most populous in the state with 860,000 residents “at risk,” Wilmot said.

“Today fire and emergency services are in crisis,” Acting State Fire Commissioner Chief Charles McGarvey, a former volunteer firefighter in Bryn Mawr, said.

Noting there are “less than two minutes to escape before a flashover,” he said, Pennsylvania led the nation with 148 fire fatalities in 2021 and has “144 as of today” in 2022.

“We are forced to do more with less,” McGarvey said. “It cannot continue to be ignored.

“We are working together to turn this crisis around.”

Grant targets recruitment

With the Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Montgomery County’s fire companies will collaborate to recruit 400 new volunteer firefighters, Wilmot said.

In preparation of launching the four-year effort, he said, the county’s fire companies have already joined together to: choose a marketing company experienced in running firefighter recruitment campaigns; develop the “ordinary people trained for the extraordinary” campaign brand; and hold community fire expos that have been turned into “a series of recruitment videos slated to run all over the county.”

PHOTO COURTESY MONTGOMERY COUNTY FIRE CHIEFS ASSOCIATION From left to right: Glen Russell, Chair of Recruitment & Retention Committee, Montgomery County Fire Chiefs Association; Ron Griffith, Abington Township Fire Department firefighter; Matt Kozeniewski, Centre Square Fire Company firefighter; George Wilmot, President of the Montgomery County Fire Chiefs Association; Mike Jones, Chief of Abington Fire Company; and Zach Trowbridge, Horsham Fire Company firefighter.

PHOTO COURTESY MONTGOMERY COUNTY FIRE CHIEFS ASSOCIATION Montgomery County firefighters practicing vehicle rescue. All training and gear are provided for free to all volunteer firefighters.

PHOTO COURTESY MONTGOMERY COUNTY FIRE CHIEFS ASSOCIATION George Wilmot, president of the Montgomery County Fire Chiefs Association, speaks to the need for more firefighters.