Shelter Island Fire Commissioner: New regs hit ‘us particularly hard’ — OSHA updates standards for volunteers

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has posted a summary explaining the need for an updated standard, which has drawn a warning from Andy Reeve, chairman of the Shelter Island Fire District Commissioners, and a prediction on the fate of the department if the new standard is put in place.

In the summary OSHA states it is proposing “a new rule to protect emergency responders, called Emergency Response. OSHA’s current Fire Brigades standard … was published in 1980 and has not been updated with subsequent improvements in personal protective clothing and equipment or advances in safety and health practices. OSHA proposes to replace the existing [rules] with the new Emergency Response standard. The new rule would provide updated health and safety protections for firefighters, emergency medical service providers, and technical search and rescuers.”

Commissioner Reeve said, “The training requirements alone would require everyone, every firefighter to complete hundreds of hours more training a year. Our department’s getting older and older every year. We got a lot of old timers and you’re not going to get them to put in an extra 100, couple 100 hours a year. Then young guys cannot afford the time either to put into all this training that will be required, because they’re all working two jobs. So it’s just an impossibility.”

Some volunteer fire districts will be harder hit than others by the proposed changes. Shelter Island, because of limited human and financial resources, may have to convert to a paid department.

“We’re kind of special here, because we’re an island, and we can only draw from the pool we have here, whereas a lot of the other towns are probably going to consolidate their equipment and their people,” Commissioner Reeve said. “We can’t really do that here. And the requirements for medical or anything else where you don’t have any of that on the Island. We don’t have a fitness center available for some of the requirements … We just don’t have any of that on Shelter Island, so it’s hitting us particularly hard.”

Eugene Perry, president of the Firefighters Association of the State of New York (FASNY), stated that the regulations are too broad and do not take into consideration the nuances of running a volunteer department. “OSHA rewrote this document and didn’t really consult the volunteer fire departments … FASNY is not against safety and training for volunteer firefighters at all. Our mission is training, information and education. So we need a standard that’s economically feasible to the volunteer fire service, as well as giving us the training that we need.”

According to Mr. Perry, OSHA has gone much more broadly with this standard. The new regulations incorporate many of the National Fire Protection Association’s standards, including changes to the physical requirements that will increase the cost from an average of $300 to $1,500.

“It’s very tough for the volunteer fire departments. Some of the Long Island departments that have smaller budgets will have a very hard time meeting the requirements that they’re asking for,”  Mr. Perry said. “The cost of that would have to be borne on the backs of whichever municipality is funding the fire department.”

In addition to an increase in cost for physicals, the proposed regulations would require additional training hours. Volunteer fire departments are currently experiencing difficulties in recruitment, so an increase in training hours would have an impact there as well.

“Now we have a standard that’s roughly about 128 hours. And when you have a firefighter that’s probably working two jobs and has kids … and then trying to get this training in somewhere in between, it makes it very difficult,” Mr. Perry said.

A virtual public hearing will take place November 12. To sign up, access the “OSHA Public Hearing on the Emergency Response Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” portal. You should see a page with a blue OSHA Public Hearing banner. Fill out the form and click “Submit.”