The National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) created a survey to better understand the experiences of volunteer and combination fire, EMS, and rescue departments dealing with the outbreak of COVID-19 and related social distancing measures. NVFC asks that all take a few minutes to complete the survey, and that to re-take the survey each week so that NVFC can track changes over time.
Based on survey and other feedback from NVFC members, answer choices related to responder mental health, morale, fundraising, and junior firefighter programs were added to the survey on March 26, and answer choices related to training and recruitment were added on April 9.
Survey Results March 20-April 9
Between March 20 and March 25 there were 168 survey completions from individuals belonging to all-volunteer (72%), mostly-volunteer (23%), and mostly career (5%) emergency services organizations. 71 percent of respondents reported having been adversely impacted by COVID-19, compared with 29 percent that have not.
Between March 26 and April 1 there were 78 survey completions from individuals belonging to all-volunteer (68%), mostly-volunteer (28%), and mostly career (4%) emergency services organizations. 77 percent of respondents reported having been adversely impacted by COVID-19, compared with 23 percent that have not.
Between April 2 and April 9 there were 57 survey completions from individuals belonging to all-volunteer (62%), mostly-volunteer (33%), and mostly career (5%) emergency services organizations. 68 percent of respondents reported having been adversely impacted by COVID-19, compared with 32 percent that have not.
Survey Results April 10-April 23
71% of respondents indicated that they were experiencing challenges related to being “Unable to train.”
Between April 10 and April 16 there were 59 survey completions from individuals belonging to all-volunteer (82%), mostly-volunteer (17%), and mostly-career (2%) emergency services organizations. 78 percent of respondents reported having been adversely impacted by COVID-19, compared with 22 percent that have not.
Between April 17 and April 23 there were 50 survey completions from individuals belonging to all volunteer (63%), mostly-volunteer (31%), and mostly-career (6%) emergency services organizations. 72 percent of respondents reported having been adversely impacted by COVID-19, compared with 28 percent that have not.
Notable Trends Analysis
71% of respondents indicated that they were experiencing challenges related to being “Unable to train.” That was down from 76% last week, but was still the answer choice that the highest percentage of respondents reported as being a challenge in the past week.
Supply/resupply of PPE continues to be the area that respondents are having difficulty with, although the overall percentage reporting that this is a problem has trended downward (72% week 1; 60% week 2; 66% week 3; 59% week 4; 55% for week 5 for “running low” and 35%/25%/15%/16%/10% for “run out”) as has the “Need Help” rating (4.5/4.0/3.8/3.4/3.4 out of 5).
47 percent of respondents indicated that they were experiencing challenges related to being “Unable to recruit new volunteers.” This was the answer choice with the third highest percentage of responses.
Trends in data
The percentage of respondents indicating that staff are unwilling or unable to respond was 45% the previous week compared with 47% the previous week and 46% since the survey began. “Need more personnel” scored 3.2 out of 5 on the “Need Help” scale the previous week, behind only “Supply/resupply of PPE.”
The number of respondents decreased from 59 two weeks ago to 50 the previous week. The more responses the survey receives, the more robust and useful the data are. The more responses the survey receives the more robust and useful the data are. NVFC urges all to take the survey every week to keep NVFC informed about the experiences!