VIDEO: Iowa firefighters are wearing expired safety equipment, putting their lives at risk in an emergency. 92% of the fire departments in Iowa are made up of volunteers. Mostly in smaller rural towns. Our i9 investigation found that many smaller volunteer fire departments simply don’t have the money to keep up with the increasingly expensive equipment.
The 614 people who call Stanwood home rely on Fire Chief Dakota Adams for help. Keeping his community safe is something he’s taken pride in for the last ten years. “Being able to be there on someone’s worst day of their life, whether it’s losing their car in a car accident or losing their house in a structure fire,” said Chief Adams. His department typically responds to around 50 calls a year. When a call comes in, 15 volunteers spring into action.
“Once that pager goes off, we’ll come down to the station,” said Adams. “We all live within a block of the department.” That means strapping on protective equipment, including coats, pants, and boots. But that gear is only good for so long. “Our gear is only good for ten years, and then it can not go inside a structure because parts of it could start failing, and you are more tolerable for injury,” he said.
Adams showed us three jackets that were out of the NFPA’s standards, as well as other fire equipment. He said, for the most part, the out-of-date gear is worn by probationary volunteer members who would enter a burning structure, but he said sometimes they have no choice when they arrive on scene. “It’s very scary knowing that expired gear is entering structure fires,” said Chief Adams.
The NFPA sets the minimum standard for safety equipment and how often gear should be replaced, but replacing it isn’t cheap. “I placed an order for two sets of gear, and that’s $7,000 a piece,” he said. With an annual budget of around $40,000, those two sets of gear alone are 35% of the department’s budget, and Stanwood isn’t alone. “It’s been an issue for quite, quite some time,” said Kent Brix, Vice Chair of the Iowa Firefighter Association.
