It’s time to retire two words that we have used for decades to delineate firefighters – volunteer and career.
Why do we need them? NFPA 1001: Standard for Fire Fighter Professional Qualifications outlines training and certification for firefighters. That standard doesn’t distinguish between firefighters who staff a department 24/7 and those who gets alerted by a pager. No, there is one set of criteria so there should only be one word that defines that person – firefighter.
(And for those who might pipe up about standard distinctions like 1710 and 1720, keep in mind that those distinctions are more of a label for the department than the individual members.) Read More…