Amid a decade of decreasing CFA volunteers statewide, Eynesbury CFA is keen to get more volunteers at its local brigade.
Eynesbury Brigade community safety co-ordinator Adrian Kendall said adding to the 35 members would take the pressure off existing volunteers to respond to every event.
“We don’t have an ideal number – the more we get the easier that it gets on the people that are currently doing it,” he said.
“We’re currently struggling for day time responders with the majority of our volunteers working nine-to-five. Retirees or work from home people would be fantastic, people that can get the truck out the door during the day.
“The more people that show up the more it gives consistent volunteers a break.”
Statewide, CFA volunteer numbers have been declining over the last decade. Operational firefighters are down by more than 9000 from 2012-23, and last year CFA fell short of their target number by more than 8000 operational volunteers, CFA data shows.
A CFA spokesperson said it’s “common” for volunteer numbers to fluctuate, and CFA still has “strong” membership of more than 52,000 volunteers.
“CFA has never drawn on its full pool of operational volunteers in any given year … during the most recent extreme campaign fires in the 2019-2020 fire season, CFA deployed around 6800 firefighters to fires in both Victoria and interstate,” the spokesperson said
“Last year, CFA welcomed more than 2200 new volunteer members and around 300 junior members across the state. In addition, CFA currently has more than 3000 volunteer applications at various stages of the recruitment process.”
Mr Kendall said despite a “downward trend” during COVID, volunteer Eynesbury gains about four to six new members a year.
“We’ve been holding our numbers steady but with the way Eynesbury is growing we’d like to increase that,” he said.
