As Long Island firefighters grow older, a push for younger recruits

Long Island’s volunteer firefighters keep getting older.

With advancing age comes more difficulty kicking down doors, battling fires inside burning buildings and rescuing those who are trapped — and the job is deadlier for older firefighters.

“We need young people,” said Robert Leonard, spokesman for the Firefighters Association of the State of New York, which is holding a recruitment drive this weekend and inviting prospective recruits — particularly those ages 18 to 50 — to stop by their local firehouses.

“Age is a number, but at some point that catches up to people,” said Leonard, also an assistant chief with the volunteer Syosset Fire Department. “They're aging, and they can't be as functional as they once were."

It’s not just on Long Island where volunteer firefighters are aging. It’s happening across the United States, according to a 2021 fact sheet by the National Volunteer Fire Council. Nationwide, the average age of firefighters has gone up in communities of every size that the council analyzed.

For example, in 1987, 33% of firefighters in communities with from 10,000 to 24,999 people were under 30, 34% were 30 to 39, 21% were 40 to 49 and 13% were 50 and older. But by 2018, those under 30 were 27%, 30 to 39 were 30%, 40 to 49 were 24% and those 50 and up were 20%.

Even more Long Island firefighters are volunteers than the national average, which, according to the U.S. Fire Administration, is 7 in 10. Only two Long Island departments, Setauket and Long Beach, have some paid firefighters, Leonard said. But unlike in much of the country, where the total number of volunteer firefighters has dwindled — a 17% drop since 1984, even as call volume has tripled, according to the council — the number of volunteers on the Island has stayed relatively steady. It's just that they're getting older, and younger people aren't signing up in sufficient numbers to fill in the ranks, said Leonard, 54, and a volunteer firefighter since he was 22.

The prime recruitment target for "interior" firefighters, he said: healthy and fit Long Islanders between ages 18 and 50.

He said he didn’t have age statistics about Long Island’s roughly 20,000 volunteer firefighters, who are members of about 180 departments from the Queens line to Orient Point and respond to hundreds of thousands of emergency calls annually. But he said the number of Long Island volunteers who can battle an interior fire has declined.

Younger firefighters are also less likely to die on duty, according to an October 2021 report by the National Fire Protection Association. Firefighters age 50 and older accounted for nearly half all on-duty firefighter deaths over a five-year period, even though they represent just a quarter of all firefighters in the United States, the report found. Also: Almost two-thirds of firefighters over 45 who died in 2020 died of heart attacks or other cardiac episodes.

To be sure, there are older firefighters who are in tip-top shape and fantastic health, Leonard said. And even older personnel who aren’t in their prime can drive a firetruck, handle crowd and traffic control and perform ancillary duties. But, he said, “the challenge is maintaining a force of physically capable and available interior firefighters.”

And Father Time is also creeping up on Long Island’s paramedics, emergency medical technicians and other ambulance personnel.

For example, at the Community Ambulance Company, which serves Bohemia, Sayville, Oakdale and West Sayville, well over half the 115 or so active volunteers are older than 70, according to director Jamie Atkinson.

“They call themselves the AARP group,” said Atkinson, 40, who joined the company’s youth squad at 16.

And when new recruits do join, it’s often just to get sufficient experience before becoming a medical doctor or physician's assistant, Atkinson said.

“They do their time,” he said, “then they pick up and they go do their residency somewhere.”

As part of the RecruitNY Weekend drive, the Firefighters Association is encouraging local fire departments to hold open houses.

“Come try on the gear. Come get on the engine. Come see us doing some drills. Come check out the ambulance,” Leonard said, “and see if this fits you.”

Being a volunteer firefighter comes with training — a minimum 180 hours at the fire academy, plus 100 more of in-house by a recruit's department — plus a version of worker's compensation for on-the-job injuries and benefits for line-of-duty death. In most places, beginning at age 55 or 60, a volunteer gets a monthly stipend of $25 or $30 a month for every year of service.

By Matthew Chayes

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Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.