FireLink

A department that I belonged to for a couple years paid $10 a call. Some guys were raking in a couple hundred a month. Not enough to make a living, but with a family it helped. It also helped with recruitment and retention.

Wish I could get some more feedback on this thread. I would love to be able to make the transition to a paid-per-call department - but we are an all volunteer department that is a city entity so we have convince city hall and the city council that firefighting is just as important as road maintenance. Basically - we would have to convince them to start paying their slave labor - a difficult task to say the least.

We get paid $5.00 per call. Nevada is pretty much the only department in the county that can actually pay their staff. The other departments just put the money back into their station for gear and other stuff. We cover both city and about 140 sq miles of the county.

$10 per call. We are proposing an incentive for certification in our budget this year. Each certification would pay the volunteer a certain dollar amount per year. We'll see how it goes. I hope it is approved.

Write to Chief2C17 (Chief Mesh) He's a member of this link. SMesh@NorthGreeceFD.com He runs a combo department in up-state NY. Over 4000 runs a year. See what he has to say.

We do a 5.00 per call up to 600.00 with training and special activities factored in. It works out pretty fairly. We run about 850 calls a year. We budget for it each year.

My dept is paid 15.00 Per hour on a call. If we get a call we get 15.00 for time spent from 1-3 hours on a call. If the call last more than 3-6 then we get paid 30.00. 45.00 after 6 hours.

My department only paid for controlled burns, such as burning someones field in the spring for planting. We would typically get $20.00 to $50.00. Where our department had the true pay was in the Fire Fighter Pension Program. For three years of service we would pay in $75.00 a year and the department would match three times the amount. Then after three years the department would pay 100%. When it was time to retire the State Pension plan would give you a nice little addition to your retirement.

 My department pays $10.00 per call and $10.00 per meeting.

With San Bernardino County Fire Dept. as Paid Call Firefighter you start out at $7.35 an hour for each call you are on  or station maint. or training. After you get your EMT cert and drivers certs you get bumped up to $8.99 an hour.  For wildland fires we get an extra $4.00 an hour for hazard pay.  Our Paid Call Captain who runs the station makes $13.79 an hour.    The paid call program is phasing out here in the county and there starting to staff the paid call stations with career people.

We get $10 an hour for calls and drills/training.  Plus if you respond but miss the truck you still get $10 for responding.  And we get the funding from the county fire association.  And we recieve the pay in a lump sum at teh end of the year.  So it like a nice little Christmas bonus.  Our EMTs and ambulance drivers are the same I believe.

The fire depart ment make around 100 calls a years, we are a small town and probably a third of our calls are mutial aid for nearby towns.

don't know if it matters, since i'm animal control ... but, when i was with county on call emergencies was comp time (that's right NO PAY) and we had to schedule adjust.  if we were called out it was two hours or if we went over (rarely) it was more.  so, if a call took us half an hour, we got two hours to schedule adjust OR if it took two and half hours that's what we got to shed ad later in the week.  now, what they DIDN"T tell most of us, was we had an option of pay for call outs.  yeh, i went 5years of my on call thinking it was all comp time.  the only nice thing about comp time with them was they paid it out at the end of the year.  if there was another call out within those two hours and the previous call only lasted a half an hour then i didn't get another two hours.  county sucked. 

the agency i'm with NOW is great!  if i'm the on call officer, i get 50.00 a week for being on call.  then, i get two hours paid time and half for a call out (two hour max, if i go over, then it's that much more time, similar to what i explained above).  so, per pay period i would get 100.00 just for being on call plus whatever my call out was (if had 40hours for the week).  the other nice thing, i also get two hours for going in to feed and clean on the weekend (sat and sun each two hours).  the bestest ever (yeh, more Dubya talk) is i LIVE within my city and i'm literally a stones throw away from work.

for call outs at time and half it's 21/hr.  average is one call out a week.  the most i've accumulated was 12hours for the weekend (sat/sun only).

We get $5 per run, drill, meeting, pub. ed. or other, as mileage reimbursement.  Officers get additional depending upon rank.  We get a tax abatement (roughly making 75% of drills and meetings and a minimum # of runs).  We do about 900 runs per year, all fire calls no EMS.  We are funded by the town (and fortunately, well funded), all training is free including mileage or use of department vehicle.  FYI no matter what the incentives are, there will always be those that are no shows and/or pick and choose the runs.  So long as the other incentives are scaled down accordingly I see no problem with that.  Extra hands are extra hands.

We have a retirement plan and the chief is the only one that gets paid and not much at that.