Sens. Susan Collins (R) and Angus King (I) have signed onto a letter urging the Acting Secretary of the Department of Labor (DOL), Julie Su, to exempt volunteer fire departments from a proposed set of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations.
As currently written, these rules are expected to have a detrimental impact on Maine’s rural volunteer fire departments due to the estimated cost of compliance and substantially increased training requirements.
The regulations currently in place for firemen — which are called the Fire Brigades Standard and do not apply to other first responders — were originally published in 1980 and have not been substantially updated since.
The rules that are now under consideration — collectively titled the Emergency Response Standard — would fully replace the Fire Brigades Standard and be applicable not only to firemen, but to other types of emergency personnel as well.
According to the summary of the Emergency Response Standard provided on the OSHA website, these new rules “would include programmatic elements to protect emergency responders from a variety of occupational hazards.”
OSHA went on to explain that “the focus of the proposed Emergency Response rule is to provide basic workplace protections for workers who respond to emergencies as part of their regularly assigned duties.”
“Notably,” the agency continued, “the scope of protected workers under the proposed rule would be expanded to include workers who provide emergency medical service and technical search and rescue.”
Should these regulations be approved as they are currently written, fire departments would need to, among other things, meet new training requirements, conduct certain health evaluations, and alter their procedures for handling turnout gear and other equipment.
[RELATED: Volunteer Fire Departments Express Serious Concerns About New Regulations Proposed by OSHA]
“In order to protect our volunteer departments, we believe it is critical to explicitly exempt volunteer fire departments from the standard, or parts of the standard, as OSHA finalizes the new rule,” the senators wrote in their letter to Acting Director Su.
“The proposed rule would apply to more workers than the existing standard and would require fire departments to furnish new reports, trainings, equipment, and health services,” they said. “Volunteer firefighters have indicated they lack the financial resources and personnel to comply with this rule.”
“For many departments, implementation of this rule would render significant shares of their equipment non-compliant,” the senators continued. “The financial burden associated with replacing that equipment and furnishing the reports, assessments, trainings, and health services required by the rule would be prohibitive for volunteer departments, whose budgets are already strained.”
“Moreover, many of the training requirements would be impractical for volunteers working full-time in other capacities,” explained the senators.
“It is our intention to insulate our volunteers and the communities they serve from the negative impacts of a regulation that could jeopardize their fire services,” they said. “The rule must provide volunteer departments with the flexibility to perform their duties unencumbered by impracticable requirements.”
Also signing this letter were Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Chris Coons (D-DE), John Boozman (R-AR), John Hoeven (R-ND), Thom Tillis (R-NC), John Barrasso (R-WY), and Tom Cotton (R-AR).
Click Here to Read the Full Letter
Earlier this summer, the public comment period for these rules closed after the agency authorized several extensions in response to “numerous requests from the public.”
It was noted by many of those from Maine who offered comment on these rules that volunteer fire departments are already struggling with recruitment and the “overnight” increase in “education, training, and assessment requirements” would only serve to worsen the problem.
“If we have no people, we have no department,” said the Pownal Select Board and local Fire Chief Jesse Peters in their testimony to OSHA.
“Despite the good intentions of the proposed changes,” they continued, “it will put more citizens at risk of harm or death, by having no one to call, than to allow a system that has worked well to continue.”
Others also explained that the substantial costs associated with bringing departments into compliance are largely unrealistic and would require property taxpayers to shoulder a major burden on top of already rising expenses.
As a result of this, it was suggested that many localities may opt to substantially reduce or eliminate emergency response services should these new rules go into effect as written.
[RELATED: Mainers Pan OSHA Regs Expected to Burden Rural Volunteer Fire Departments]
According to the U.S. Fire Administration, the vast majority of fire departments in Maine are entirely (69.3 percent) or mostly (23.8 percent) volunteer-based.
“With the stroke of a pen, people who have no idea of the work we do or how well we do it, want to erase 77 years of safe, reliable and cost effective work and put us out of business,” said Chief Paul Rooney of the Northport Volunteer Fire Department in his testimony.
“If this standard goes through,we will be closed as well as most of the fire departments in Maine,” Chief Rooney said. “This will not make things safer for anybody in Maine.”
when your town doesnt have a fire dept what does that do to home owners insurance? can you get a home loan when your house is not within range of a fire dept? what is the tax increase for these standards to the town? these questions have answers, answers known to the people who make the rules…. its not about safteym but about the big picture…
Not just a local issue, happening to small fire departments all over the country. A number of NH towns are hiring full time firefighters at considerable expense because they have so few call/volunteer firefighters left because of these training requirements.
More top down gov’t rule. That always works out well.
Why didn’t they put a stop this before it became a problem, just what do they do in DC anyhow except spend money we do not have, giving it to people who do not deserve it.