{"id":25843,"date":"2025-05-01T09:09:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T13:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=25843"},"modified":"2025-05-01T09:09:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T13:09:53","slug":"volunteer-firefighter-age-limit-lowered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/01\/volunteer-firefighter-age-limit-lowered\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteer firefighter age limit lowered"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With three openings in Decatur&#8217;s paid-on-call (volunteers) firefighting force, a major change in the fire department&#8217;s hiring practices has been made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Effective with the approval of the city&#8217;s board of works and safety at its latest meeting, the age limit for hiring has been lowered from 21 to 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fire Chief Jeff Sheets requested the change, noting the increasing difficulty of finding people to fill the ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"144\" height=\"144\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Decatur-FD.jpg?resize=144%2C144&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-25844\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>With three recent resignations \u2013 including those of Justin Weil and Darrell Drake \u2013 the department&#8217;s volunteer force has been reduced from a full complement of 25 to 22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And another resignation is coming with a retirement in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The paid-on-call personnel are paid only when they respond to a fire call. The department has 12 full-time regulars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sheets said the department recently formed a Recruitment &amp; Retention Committee and that group recommended the lowering of the age requirement to 18 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Firefighting classes are now offered in high schools and those who pass the Fire &amp; Rescue Course \u201care mature enough to handle the responsibility,\u201d Sheets said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mayor Dan Rickord pointed out that numerous communities in the area and across the state are also lowering the age standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEvery (fire) department is struggling to gain recruits,\u201d said city Operations Manager Jeremy Gilbert, a longtime member of the volunteer force. \u201cWe&#8217;re just trying to think out of the box.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The limit on the other end of the age scale remains the same: no one over 40 will be hired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com With three openings in Decatur&#8217;s paid-on-call (volunteers) firefighting force, a major change in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,15,21],"class_list":["post-25843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-decatur","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25845,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25843\/revisions\/25845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}