What if the system isn’t broken…but slowly wearing down?

In this episode of The Heart of the Volunteer, I sit down with Dave Denniston — Director of Risk Management at McNeil & Company and First Vice President of the Association of FireDistricts of New York — for a conversation that gets real, fast.

Dave has spent nearly four decades in the fire service, starting back in 1989 in Cortlandville. He’s served as a firefighter, chief, commissioner, and county coordinator. Today, he sees the fire service from a different angle — one that spans departments across the state and beyond.

And what he’s seeing is something many of us are already feeling. More calls. Fewer people. More departmentsgetting dispatched just to accomplish what one used to handle.

From the outside, everything still looks fine. The trucks still show up. The job still gets done. But behind the scenes, the reality is shifting. We talk about what that actually looks like on the ground, from multiple activations just to get a crew together, to apparatus arriving with fewer firefighters than ever before.

We also dig into the bigger questions: Are we truly fixing the problem… or just managing the decline? Are we sending the right message when it comes to recruitment? Have our communities changed more than we’ve been willing to admit? And what happens if we don’t start adjusting, not years from now, but right now?

This isn’t a conversation about blame. It’s about honesty. Because the volunteer fire service has always been about people. People willing to step up, give their time, and be there when it matters most. That hasn’t gone anywhere. But the world around it has.

If you’re in the fire service, this episode will feel familiar. If you’re outside of it, this is a look into what’s really happening behind the scenes.

Either way, it’s a conversation worth having.