The Tucson Fire Department has been straining to recruit all the firefighters it needs and COVID adds a new complication.
Tucson Fire isn’t getting as many recruits as it used to. Tucson Fire Chief Chuck Ryan says the department used to get as many as 17 hundred applicants per class but now it’s more like a thousand. He says people who might have applied may find other careers with more pay and less stress. The Chief says he’s working to build a department people want to join from a sense of wanting to serve their home community.
He says COVID does not seem to discourage recruits.
“I haven’t as a Chief heard anybody say, no I don’t want to do this job because of COVID because if it’s not COVID it’s something else. We’ve had SARS and MERS and Ebola and these pandemic crises or near crises that have spanned over time, bird flu, I’ve been in this business close to 30 years now and it comes and goes, so the desire to serve is what drives people.”