A reinvigorated program to recruit firefighter cadets on Kodiak Island will kick off in about a month, in January of 2025. Some of the island's fire departments are looking to locally grown recruits, like high schoolers, to help fill their ranks for the long-term.
The Bayside Fire Department, also known as Fire Protection Area No. 1, one of four fire departments on Kodiak’s road system has faced high turnover and fluctuating staffing levels in recent years; aside from additional challenges brought on by insufficient funding, an affordable housing shortage and the naturally transient community of Kodiak since it is a rural place off of the road system.
Fire Chief Scott Ellis said his department has been focused on recruiting from a limited local pool of candidates, some of whom have no prior experience and need to go through months of training before they can begin responding to calls.
Ellis said department leadership are exploring other staffing models like a live-in program or alternatives to the current on-call deployment model. Still, Bayside, like other businesses around town, has struggled with hiring and it's already sharing several firefighters with other departments.
“Several of our on-call, or part-time firefighters are also full-time firefighters for the federal government at Coast Guard Fire Department," Ellis stated. "So there is a sharing of resources, which is good and bad.”
Ellis points out that the bad part of sharing those resources is when an emergency situation happens that requires all firefighters from one department and leaves another with too few to cover their own area.
Currently the department has 24 staff who are mostly volunteers or part-time. And Ellis estimates the department could use another nine people, like dispatchers, to help fill in the gaps.
One potential solution, at least in the long-term, is to train and recruit Kodiak teenagers who are already living in the community. Starting in the new year, the Bayside Fire Department in partnership with the Kodiak Island Borough School District, will do just that – by offering a fire cadet program to high schoolers, which comes with no out of pocket costs to the cadets.
“This January we are looking for five highly motivated individuals to apply and to interview with our department to then become our official fire recruit class of 2025," Shelby Bacus, a lieutenant who’s been with the Bayside Fire Department for two years, explained.
Bacus is among the mostly paid part-time positions on the department, which she handles in addition to her full-time job for Alaska Groundfish Data Bank.
She has been leading the effort to relaunch the local recruitment program, which ended back in 2021. Bacus has seen firsthand how this could benefit a department for the future – she went through a similar program when she was in high school.
“I started as a junior firefighter at Middleton Fire Department in Middleton, Wisconsin," Bacus said. "Throughout my entire high school experience, I was able to receive hands-on firefighting training, emergency medical training and work with a community.”
More than ten years later Bacus is still working in emergency services, while also pursuing a separate career related to fisheries. She has certifications for Fire 1, Fire 2 and various EMT levels.
Bacus said the plan is to accept up to five new recruits in the initial class and expand it in the future if there is enough interest. The first cohort of teenagers will spend months going through training and support the department in various ways. Bacus said after they finish the program, then they can become probationary firefighters on a trial basis once they turn 18-years-old.
Similarly, last year Kodiak College, a University of Alaska Anchorage campus, partnered with local organizations like the Coast Guard Base Kodiak’s Fire Department to implement a Kodiak Island Fire and Emergency Medical Services training program. It’s a free five-month-long academy geared towards preparing students for a career in firefighting and EMS.
Jacelyn Keys, director of Kodiak College, said in an announcement in November of 2023 when the university’s program launched, “Patrick Callahan has been talking to me about the dire need for trained firefighter/EMTs and has been working on a solution for two years. It truly does take a village of dedicated, passionate people to create opportunity and change. I am excited to be working with IGP [Island Grad Project], local Coast Guard and Coast Guard Fire leadership, the City of Kodiak, and Kodiak Fire Department, to bring Patrick’s vision of a stable recruiting platform for local fire departments and family-wage careers for locals to life.”
A Coast Guard Fire Department member, Patrick Callahan, is the founder of and instructor at Kodiak Island Fire & EMS Training, also known as KIFEMS.
Coast Guard Base Kodiak Fire Department Chief Aaron Griffin said he hopes recruitment and training programs like these will benefit not only Bayside but the entire island’s firefighter force.
“And that’s really what we’re trying to do here, is create that family culture between the fire departments with people that are rooted here in Kodiak, looking to stay," Griffin said. "And we’re hoping the next generation of that family culture kind of percolates and starts to come to fruition.”
The Bayside Fire Department’s fire cadet program is now accepting applications from youth ages 14 to 17. For more information and how to apply, go online to the department’s Facebook page or the Kodiak Island Borough’s website.
