TOWN OF FREEDOM, Wis — Here in Wisconsin the US Fire Administration estimates about 90 percent of our firefighters are volunteers. And if you talk to just about any rural fire department they'll tell you, trying to find those volunteers is getting more difficult.
That's in part why Senator Tammy Baldwin has sponsored the Volunteer First Responder Housing Act, a bill that would give lower income volunteer firefighters and volunteer EMT's loan guarantees to purchase homes. It's an incentive that some believe will draw younger volunteers into rural areas where they can get a break from the federal government, when buying a home.
"We got to figure something out because this is not a problem that's going away. This isn't a Fox Valley problem, this isn't a state of Wisconsin problem, this is a national problem," says Chief Mark Green of the Freedom Volunteer Fire Department.
Green says currently his department is about five volunteers short of being fully staffed and that it has become more difficult to find volunteers in recent years. Green adds that he's not sure if this bill would solve the volunteer shortage problem, but he say's rural departments like his can't afford to offer incentives to draw volunteers in on their own.
The bill, would also offer up to 15-hundred dollars in tax credits for low to moderate income volunteers who qualify. The bill is expected to go up for a vote in the senate in the near future.
