In Norton, drafting government workers for firefighting is filling a need

Almost one-third of Norton Fire Department’s roster doubles as city employees in other jobs. Todd Lagow, chief of the Norton department, said he thinks more people would volunteer to be firefighters if they were only asked.

“They’re just not asked,” he said.

Norton is a city in the southwest corner of Virginia, with a population of just under 3,500 people. The Norton Fire Department made strides in recent years with staffing, which is something that Lagow credits to collaboration with the municipal government, bridging conversations with people already involved in public service, such as those working in city administration or public works. 

It is a unique model. While the city has a volunteer fire department, the municipal employees who “volunteer” are able to leave their jobs during regular work hours if they respond to a fire call, for instance. The fire service becomes part of their paid workweek, although the firefighters don’t receive overtime if their fire service extends past their regular working hours.

“Without that, we would be in a lot of trouble,” Lagow said. “Very few communities do that, and it’s just a system that we have developed over the course of probably 30 years.”

Norton’s fire department is a part of the municipal government, but run by volunteers, other than Lagow, who holds a paid position. The Norton Rescue Squad, an independent nonprofit organization, supplements emergency medical services that aren’t provided by the department.

Lagow said that, over time, the demands of fire departments have increased while the number of volunteers willing to help has decreased. 

The National Fire Protection Association found that the number of volunteer firefighters from 1984 to 2020 dropped by about 220,850 volunteers nationwide, from an initial total of almost 900,000 volunteers.

A win for word of mouth

In Norton, 28 people volunteer in the fire department — seven short of its target staffing. Norton’s fire department receives about 350 calls per year, Lagow said.

One of Lagow’s captains is the director of public works. The assistant city manager doubles as an assistant fire chief. And other public works employees double as volunteer firefighters. Lagow said he has about eight full-time city employees who volunteer in the department and another few who work for the rescue squad. 

Federal law doesn’t allow pay for volunteers, Lagow said. The city instead allocates funding that is used in a point system to give firefighters a stipend. The city allocated $35,000 in this fiscal year toward that. Points are allocated to firefighters based on multipliers that correlate with how many additional certifications a firefighter has — those with more certifications can receive more money.

The fire department also has its own workers’ compensation policy to cover its staffing.

Stephen McElroy is Norton’s assistant city manager and a fire captain. He said he’s volunteered with the fire department for 22 years and has been working with the city for six.

“It’s hard to find folks that are civic-minded and want to help others,” McElroy said, “especially volunteers.” He said he thinks city employees already “take pride in what they do for the city and want to make sure citizens are protected.”

It’s an idea that’s supported by a 2023 U.S. Fire Administration report on recruitment and retention. The report cited that municipal workers employed in road and park maintenance and utilities may be “well-positioned” during the day to respond to calls.

“They’re full-time city employees, and unless they’re on some type of a critical job, like a broken water main or something like that … they’re allowed to leave to respond to calls,” Lagow said of his department’s dual staff. Back in the 1950s through the 1980s, it was more common for employers to allow employees to leave work for volunteering of all kinds, which isn’t so common anymore, Lagow said.

Lagow said this system works both ways: He’ll have city workers who are interested in becoming firefighters, or firefighters who enjoy working with the city and look for a job through municipal service.

Even without a full roster, Lagow said the arrangement between the city and the fire department allows for fewer non-city-worker volunteers needed to cover the working hours.

“A lot of departments might have 30 people, but of those people, only two can respond from nine to five. So there’s that difference,” he said.

Lagow said this system came naturally to his department through word of mouth and open discussion between city employees and firefighters.

“Somebody that’s working for the city sees a coworker that’s also a firefighter, and they’re working together, it tends to bring up the discussion or the question, so they’re more likely to stop by,” he said. “We work really closely with public works and the police department, so that barrier is broken between us, and they feel free to talk to us.”

The department’s ranking given by the Insurance Services Office, or ISO, improved significantly in recent years. The office reviews a community’s risk for fire every five years, Lagow said, on a scale of one to five — one being the best fire department, five being the worst.

Lagow said his department was previously a five and in the most recent assessment was bumped up to a three.

“It just speaks to our department and, more importantly, our elected officials’ interest in public safety,” Lagow said. Higher funding for training and equipment plays a big role in ISO scoring, he said.

Opening up that line of communication with a municipality can help a department advocate for funding — which Lagow said hasn’t been a problem for Norton, as his city council supports the department’s financial needs, he said.

The city’s budget for the volunteer fire department has grown over the past three years, from just over $300,000 in fiscal year 2025 to over $620,000 in the fiscal year 2027 budget, although the amount used to pay volunteers decreased by $5,000 this year.

The 2023 U.S. Fire Administration report cited a lack of understanding by elected officials and a lack of transparency into operations by fire workers as a cause of tension with local government partners. If local officials don’t understand what happens in a local fire department, they won’t feel inclined to increase the department’s funds.

“We are Norton, and what works for Norton may not work for St. Paul or Wise or wherever else, but right now, it’s working really well for us,” Lagow said.

A sticky situation in places like Stickleyville

City employees doubling as volunteers works great on “sunny days,” Lagow said. However, during a citywide emergency, the department will face multiple people being responsible for filling multiple roles, which Lagow called a “hazard” for his department. 

“Myself, for example, I’m the fire chief but I’m also the emergency management coordinator,” Lagow said. “So wearing those two hats in the time of a disaster, you need your emergency management coordinator and your fire chief doing two different things.”

In extreme cases, Lagow said he’d rely on neighboring agencies through mutual aid and automatic aid agreements — with a report of a fire, participating neighboring agencies are also automatically dispatched.

Seeking volunteers from the municipality can also be difficult for unincorporated communities, like Stickleyville, which is located in Lee County, southwest of Norton. Unincorporated communities don’t have their own municipal governments.

Stickleyville’s population, as of the 2020 census, was under 300 people. Ten years ago, Bryan Sage got involved with the Stickleyville Volunteer Fire Department, and he is now its chief.

The youngest guy on the roster at that time was 68 years old, Sage said. “They told us if we don’t get some fresh blood in here we’ll have to close the doors,” he said, “because it’s a young man’s sport.”

At that time, the department included just six volunteers. The department began running ads in the paper, putting out bulletins and held a community meeting to draw interest. That’s around the time when Sage and many of his peers got involved, he said.

“We’re in a different situation than even some of the smaller towns like Norton, because we’re out here in the country. We don’t really have a lot to draw from,” Sage said.

He said most residents of Stickleyville work outside of the town — he and his son both commute about an hour each out of Stickleyville for work. “So if we have a call that comes out during the day, we’re extremely limited on who we have available. That’s the part that worries me the most,” Sage said.

He said there are eight fire departments throughout Lee County. Some Lee County employees volunteer with the Jonesville or Pennington Gap departments, but no Lee County employees are with Sage’s department. 

There are 20 volunteers in the Stickleyville department. But on a typical call, six to eight firefighters may respond. Like Lagow, Sage said mutual aid is an important tool to fall back on. He said if Stickleyville hosts a major event, at least two to four fire departments have to be there to ensure safety. 

Lane Whitlow, with the Speedwell Volunteer Fire Department, said his is a small community, too, in which most people work outside of the municipality’s borders.

Even if a volunteer department can’t recruit from local governments, they can still reach out to people who are civic-minded for other reasons.

Along with a cadet program that’s brought in firefighters, Whitlow said they’ve “come a pretty good way” this year due to new programs that encourage family members of firefighters to help out in the station in other ways — cooking meals during a big call or helping run fundraisers, for example. 

He said some of their membership has even stemmed from existing members encouraging their family members to join.