Hazardous Work, Long Hours, and Shared Cultures

Over the last few months, we have seen extraordinary fire behavior to our counterparts up north and a slow start to our normally busy Arizona season which has given me some time to catch up on reading and writing. Which brings me to the focus of this blog—recruitment and retention. Recruitment and retention have been problems for my agency and for everyone around me.

When I was getting into the fire service the local municipal agency used a convention center for testing, literally three days of morning and afternoon testing with over 3,000 applicants. Our community college had classes of 45 each semester with a waiting list and had to put requirements in place that EMT training had to be done first. I signed up as a reserve on two different agencies and on a contractor engine just to have a chance.

Since then, agencies are struggling to keep people in the service and have enough bodies to fill seats on trucks and in departments. Recruitment is dwindling quickly in the community college program where they are having to go to local high school and job fairs just to find enough to even run a class.

The wildland fire serve faces a myriad of problems, many of which I personally cannot change. However, a few people have pointed me in the direction of "culture" as something I can influence. We often think our problems are unique, but maybe Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance can help with our own predicament.  Shackleton supposedly took out the following advertisement to recruit for his 1914 Trans Antarctic expedition:

   MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS. – Sir Ernest Shackleton

For those who don't know the story, they didn’t make it, their boat sank, and the entire crew was stranded on an ice-covered bay in Antarctica. The crew split up into two small teams—one set out in a rowboat traveling almost 800 miles and the other waited on a deserted island. The entire group was saved. Pretty impressive seeing how they lasted almost two years stranded on ice fields and deserted islands.

• What can we take from Shackleton's leadership and the crew of the Endurance and apply to our own situation with regard to recruitment and retention?
• What do we need to do to reach the younger generation of passionate, hard-working firefighters?

I have a theory. We are not clearly articulating our collective “WHY.” We aren't explaining or teaching the reason we got hooked on fighting wildland fires. We aren't sharing our rich history with a common language and a foundation through the Incident Command System. Shackleton recruited likeminded people who shared a common understanding (“culture”) and could accomplish the unthinkable. We need to do the same! 

Part of making our recruitment and retention better and more successful comes when we embrace a culture that goes beyond agency badges and the color of trucks. Culture is the piece that brings us together and keeps us moving forward, This culture allows us to show up on any fire in any state/country and know that we fit in and can work in the system. The stories of Ed Pulaski, Mann Gulch, the Season of 1910 and countless others from every region across the country have given us a culture we need to share and tap into. Each of us has a duty to nurture this culture so future wildland firefighters with like minds know they can join future expeditions.

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*This blog was inspired by Start with Why by Simon Sinek, Chapter 6 - Emergence of Trust.

*Click here for more information on Shackleton and his expedition.  

Christopher Ayer is a Firefighter, Type 1/Engine Boss Trainee/Paramedic/Wildland Coordinator for Corona De Tucson Fire Department in Tucson, Arizona. The expressions and views are those of the author.