By Nick Sullivan
The Charlotte Observer
LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. — Calls for fire service used to trickle into Lancaster County at about 1,200 a year, or 3 per day.
That volume has exploded nearly tenfold since the turn of the century, according to Darren Player , the county director of fire rescue and emergency management.
The challenge became keeping pace despite a growing population, dwindling fire forces and limited funding.
And Lancaster has five years or less before its fire services reach crisis levels under current trends, according to County Administrator Dennis Marstall’s estimates. Residents will notice pockets of pain due to “woefully inadequate response times.”
“You will see the tragedies of a full house burning down before anyone gets there. You’ll see insufficient response if you have commercial or retail fire,” Marstall said. “That pain point is only increasing every day countywide when you have an increasing population.”
His job is to make sure these doomsday scenarios don’t come to pass.
County leaders are exploring solutions, but it’s a delicate balancing act that will require community buy-in.
Fighting fire with a depleted volunteer force
Twenty years ago, Lancaster County had more than 600 volunteers ready to respond to a fire. Its population sat just under 66,000 in those days, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Charlotte and its surrounding areas have since experienced a surge in growth that brought Lancaster County to 110,000 residents. Thousands more outside travelers are expected to pass through the area, too, with developments like Costco and Target on the horizon.
The volunteer firefighter force hasn’t kept up. It’s shrunk to just 243 people, Player said, tracking with a sharp national decline.
“The call volume is just much more than the volunteer system can handle,” said Greg Nicholson , chief of the Indian Land Fire District .
Indian Land’s two fire stations received about 3,500 calls for service in 2024, representing more than a third of the county’s total across 19 stations. Most stations received fewer calls than there are days in a year.
Nicholson’s department serves the most populous region in Lancaster County and is the first to shift toward a career firefighter model with mostly full-time workers instead of volunteers. It will soon have 56 full-time employees who can staff the unincorporated community’s two stations at all hours of the day, Nicholson said. Its force ran on volunteers until recently.
The county also employs 15 career firefighters who travel in teams across Lancaster County each day as well as one who is stationed in Kershaw. The roaming firefighters primarily serve rural areas without full-time workers, but their shifts run only from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. That leaves mornings and evenings without coverage.
Marstall said he is talking to Lancaster County Council about tweaking their schedules to run in 12-hour shifts so a full-time countywide worker is always on the clock. That request has not yet been approved.
Marstall is also researching a plan to divide the county into four service areas, each with a fully staffed station that could assist volunteer departments in their region. He anticipates the county moving toward this model.
But volunteers are still needed. Data from the National Volunteer Fire Council shows about 65% of the nation’s firefighters remain volunteers today. Changing labor demographics just mean they can’t be the only responders when fire alarms ring.
“It’s hard to respond to a call at 3 in the morning if you have a job that’s not flexible and you have to be at work at 8 o’clock,” Marstall said. “It’s just the changing economy and way of life. It doesn’t lend itself for people to be able to want to be firefighters.”
Extra fees could be the solution?
The county gave each fire department about $7,900 this year to spend at their discretion. For larger purchases like trucks, which can cost more than $1 million, the county borrows money through voter-approved bonds.
Marstall said the county is working on a resolution for council consideration that would add a separate fire services tax for residents. For now, few supplemental funding avenues exist.
Departments can apply for a competitive one-time grant from a larger pot of county money, but just one is awarded a year. Volunteer departments rely on fundraising to generate additional money.
Indian Land and Van Wyck are the exceptions.
The two panhandle communities established their own fire districts in the early 2000s to help pay for more expenses as the county’s fastest growing region. In exchange for more robust services, residents pay an annual fee that has increased over time.
Residents pay $90 per rooftop in Van Wyck , but Marstall said the town might soon look to increase the fee so it can hire more full-time support like Indian Land. Van Wyck only has one paid firefighter.
Indian Land residents pay $240 per rooftop, with businesses paying more based on square footage.
“We kept running into issues where our needs were growing, and the county’s philosophy was kind of like, ‘We’re going to buy 10 hoses for every station,’” said Brian Endres , the president and longtime member of the fee board that oversees Indian Land’s fire budget. “Does that station down there that only had 10 calls last year need 10 hoses? We could use 15.”
Endres said he asked the County Council to change Indian Land’s flat fire services fee to a millage, which would tie residents’ payments to their individual property values. The county hasn’t made any formal plans to do this, but Endres said he will continue pushing for the change as an equitable solution to keep pace with growth.
Paid vs volunteer
Quicker response times are one benefit of a fee-paying district, Nicholson said. His firefighters respond in 6.2 minutes on average because they are stationed at all hours of the day, he said.
Volunteers take several minutes to drive to the station, then get ready before taking off. On weekends and nights when volunteers might not be readily available, dispatchers sometimes call up to three departments before somebody heads to a scene.
There can be tension between the panhandle and the rest of the county since Indian Land tends to receive more resources, Marstall said. But they’re also paying more and have more calls.
Indian Land’s two fire stations received more calls last year than 13 other stations combined, county data shows.
“If you go to the southern part of the county, they’ll say, ‘Oh, Indian Land wants everything new. They want new.’ And they don’t see it as a need,” Endres said. “You’ve got to control and protect your dense area in order for your rural area to be able to survive.”
Indian Land’s next battle is to secure a third station, which Endres and Nicholson said is a necessity. They’ve been asking for years, they said, and the price tag only continues to climb.
“The county has to understand if you’re going to allow all these rooftops and commercial businesses, you’ve gotta have a plan,” Endres said. “We built way too fast without a plan, and now we’re paying the price, but we’ve got a lot of great people who are willing to work with us and help to make it work.”
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