Whitehall Volunteer Fire Department chief Steve Brock and former chief Brian Brooks Sr. attended the Town Board’s monthly meeting last week to appeal for help in finding and retaining firefighters.

Brooks said the firemen need help with fixing the volunteer department’s “critical” retention rate.

After two fires just two hours apart last Monday, the need for more volunteers was shown. The department expedited the first truck to the Skene Street structure fire without a full crew, according to Brooks. Mutual aid responded to the second fire that day on Lafayette Street.

“The only other truck was a ladder truck that had one person on it,” Brooks said. “The manpower is getting pretty thin, and this is getting to be critical.

“Thank God for mutual aid because getting enough people into the truck to roll out to a car accident or whatever because it’s all about manpower and we need to do something about recruitment retention.”

Brooks said the department has investigated a Length of Service Program which would offer retirement benefits to firefighters the longer they stay with a department. Brooks also said it is likely for a firefighter to stay with a single department after serving it for five years. The program is point-based and accumulates with the level of fire education someone has and how much they participate.

“These points with a LOSP are equivalent to money a firefighter could receive in retirement,” he said. “A guy could be 60 years old and pulling $800 a month from the fund, but you need to establish the fund first.”

The fire department has been seeking a training center to help with the education of protocols when responding to a fire and Brooks said this should be something that concerns the village and town. He also said that the department has no money for the program with the budget it has and has received no grant money.

“They won’t fund a fixed facility, but they will allow a mobile one which I gave a shot and fell short twice,” he said. ‘We’re doing this on a shoestring and trying to get it running. But it doesn’t matter if we don’t have people interested.

“The quality of people that walk in off the street is not what you would expect 30 years ago.”

Supervisor John Rozell asked Brooks how the board could assist the department and Brooks said funds to be awarded to Whitehall in 2025 from the Champlain Hudson Power Express Line could be used for the training center project.

“That infrastructure money if there is any of that would help,” he said. “We’re going to start the project now on a shoestring, but we want this to expand into a propane training center, we’ll have a roof simulator, and a mask confidence course so a member won’t take their air pack off in a high heat situation. We want the members to be acclimated and also have live-action fire training scenarios.”

Brooks also argued that when structure fires do happen in Whitehall, it’s likely that the buildings will not be returned to the tax roll.

“We’re saving buildings on the tax roll. What happens in the village and town is you have a bad structure fire and then those buildings don’t get rebuilt and you end up with empty property… we need that payback and the only way to keep buildings on the tax roll is to have a department that can actually go in and save the property,” he said.

Then Brooks said he believes the best way to combat the retention issue would be the addition of a fire district to Whitehall. He said that a district would provide more financial security for things such as equipment costs within the next three years.

“Fire districts work in the state of New York,” Brooks said. ‘The communities once they get them like them and the volunteer firefighters like them because they aren’t struggling wondering where the next dollar is going to come from.”

Board member Chris Dudley said the idea of a fire district being introduced to Whitehall would not be something he wants to see happen.

“Your motivation for it falls short,” Dudley said. ‘I don’t believe a fire district is going to help with enrollment in that fire company at all. When you started tonight you were talking about enrollment to start with, and I don’t see a fire district helping with that.”

Rozell said he will be looking into ways to increase enrollment with the fire company over the month.

“If it was a really strong fire company with a lot of members, I think you would have a lot easier go at a fire district. So, my opinion is let’s try to build the fire company up,” Rozell said.