A fire company in Bucks County has begun to hire more full-time employees as they are faced with a lack of volunteer firefighters. Alicia Roberts wrote about the volunteers for CBS Philadelphia.

To help cover a gap in volunteers, Northampton Township’s Fire Company has hired full-time, paid firefighters.

The lack of volunteers is a problem most local companies are facing. There were over 300,000 volunteer firefighters in Pennsylvania in the 1970s. Today, there are fewer than 70,000.

“The issue is really around response time,” said Adam M. Selisker, the fire chief of Northampton Township. “How long do you want to wait for a fire truck?”

For more than a century, volunteers were the ones running Northampton Township’s Fire Company.

“Volunteers are the gems of the community,” said Selisker. “I mean, they really have done this for so long for free because they want to help their community.”

But due to the fewer number of people volunteering, Selisker had to hire ten paid firefighters on Sunday. They will staff a first-out-the-door truck that will be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This move will help reduce response times in the township from several minutes to just 60 seconds.

“The volunteers are still very important and we still need them to man the additional trucks,” said Selisker.

Read more about Northampton Township’s Fire Company at CBS Philadelphia.

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