As the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration considers new regulations for volunteer fire departments, New Ashford Fire Chief Frank Speth III issued a statement highlighting the burden this change will place on many fire crews in the Berkshires and could mean anywhere in rural America.
At issue is the proposed Emergency Response Standard, which OSHA is currently considering as a way to tighten the patchwork of workplace safety regulations for volunteer emergency responders like firefighters. Chief Speth was among 475 people who testified during an 11-day period earlier this month in which OSHA sought comment from firefighters across the country in virtual hearings before the administration made a final decision on whether to move forward with the Emergency Response Standard .
Like other rural emergency responders, Chief Speth warned that this new standard could mean more harm than protection. He warned that the proposed training, medical, educational, administrative and equipment costs would be too high for smaller operations. This could well lead to smaller volunteer departments simply disappearing. Chief Speth warned that this could well apply to the small town his department defends.
“If these proposed rules are adopted, there is a real possibility that the City of New Ashford will not be able to afford them and will have to forego establishing a fire department,” Chief Speth said during his OSHA testimony last week. “If that happens, there will be no practical replacement for the New Ashford Fire Department.”
He also explained in his statement that the closest other fire departments in neighboring towns were 7 and 10 miles away – which could mean a truck could have to arrive up to 20 minutes to respond to a fire in New Ashford.
It's worth noting that smaller volunteer departments like New Ashford's don't fight nearly as many fires as larger, professional departments in more populated areas. Most of the calls the north Berkshire town's 15-strong volunteer force responds to are medical calls or small outdoor fires. Of the 42 emergency calls the department received last year, one involved a structure fire.
However, the National Fire Protection Association estimates that volunteers in small towns are far less likely to be injured – about eight to 10 times less likely – than professional firefighters in larger cities. So if OSHA is concerned about safety, it should ask itself: How much additional safety does this standard provide for small towns with volunteer fire departments? These seemingly apparent benefits must be weighed against the potential safety costs of simply regulating defunct local fire departments in rural communities. Even if a small department only responds to a few structure fires per year, that can mean a few homes or even lives are saved, which might not have been the case if the local fire department had been disbanded due to overly strict new regulations.
We are not against sensible regulation and safety aspects. But is it really safer to risk burning down small town fire departments in the name of safety, only to leave those small towns without a fire department to protect them? If the still-smoldering Butternut Fire in South County reminds us of anything, it's that rural small town fire departments face unique and disproportionate challenges. These challenges sometimes manifest themselves in headline-grabbing forms like a 1,300-acre mountain forest fire, but the more mundane challenges are much less visible but often more existential: budget and recruiting problems.
OSHA or anyone else should have a very good reason for fueling these challenges. Like Chief Speth, we do not believe the proposed emergency standard is worth this cost to rural communities like ours. While OSHA's comment and testimony periods that were open earlier this year have now closed, we urge OSHA to go back to the drawing board on the Emergency Response Standard and reconsider the costs it imposes on volunteer fire departments, that serve millions of Americans, including many of our neighbors in Berkshire.