Volunteer fire departments in Wisconsin have lost more than 930 positions since 2020.
That’s a 5.5% decline.
It comes at a time when 911 call volumes are up—something that’s only expected to increase as Wisconsin’s population gets older.
A new Wisconsin Policy Forum report shows how emergency services are trying to adapt.
A 2022 survey of EMS agencies in Wisconsin found that 41% had periods in their schedule where they did not have adequate staffing to respond to a request for an ambulance.
Wisconsin ranks 14th in U.S. for fire departments that rely on volunteers with 93% of department all or mostly volunteers.
Because of the decline in people volunteering, many departments have created paid positions. Wisconsin Policy Forum found 488 full- and part-time paid fire department positions created across the state, a 10.4% increase.
With revenue limits that’s not always an option for municipalities.
“They can turn to referendum, they can look towards becoming a district which has a little bit more flexibility in how it increases its revenues,” said Ashley Fisher, a senior research associate for the Wisconsin Policy Forum and report author. “But the options really are limited because our local governments have spending restraints and they have revenue restraints, and so even if they need to move away from the volunteer model, that can be challenging.”
Fisher found that collaborations or consolidations have been among the best solutions.
This can vary greatly ranging from stations getting together for training to service sharing to consolidating multiple stations.
Fisher pointed to the North Shore Fire Department in Milwaukee that consolidated seven emergency service departments in 1995. WPF did a 20 year of the change in 2015.
“We found that there had been a reduction in fire stations from seven to five. There was a reduction in fire rescue vehicles from 31 to 15. There were reduced personnel levels compared with previously independent department staffing levels. There were more paramedics, and there was higher fire capability ratings, higher than any department had previously maintained on its own,” said Fisher. “Then significantly, each of the municipalities experienced operating savings, which means that for five of the seven, the savings exceeded $250,000 annually. So that was a huge success story.”
WPF laid out several barriers to change in its report including lack of good data, absence of a single coordinator, unwillingness to lose local control, and conflict over what would be an appropriate cost-sharing formula.
A challenge in the Northwoods is the large geographic area.
Oneida County utilizes four staffed bases and one volunteer base. Roaming ambulances are used to backfill or provide a second ambulance when the first ambulance is responding to a call.
The Northwoods EMS, formed in 2024, provides ambulance service to four western Vilas County towns covering about 250 square miles. The district has dropped their wait time from around 40 minutes to an average of just 13 minutes.
You can read the full report here.
