Volunteer departments

I am not very familiar with volunteer depts because I am out west and there are very few. Are there any that are busy and get jobs or are they mostly just bedroom communities? I have always wondered if back east there are any busy urban volunteers

Yes, there are some very busy volunteer EMS agencies back East -- in NY, for example.

https://www.rescue1.org/ (12,000 calls in 2008, and I'm sure the number has only gotten higher)
https://vbvrs.org/ (only 13,000 calls in 2017)
http://www.fortleevac.org/aboutus/ (3958 calls in 2017)
https://www.sayrevilleems.com/ (2776 calls in 2017)

I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones I could think of off the top of my head and find by searching the internet

I’m a member of an EMS agency in way upstate NY and we average around 2000-2300 calls per year (I’d link our website but it got hacked). There are a number of other agencies in our county which also fluctuate around that call volume

If you are including departments that are combination, and run with career staff alongside volunteer....

http://www.navac.org/ (6,500 calls a year)
https://www.clintonems.org/ (3,000 calls a year)
http://frfars.org/ (2,700 calls a year)
http://westernrescue.org/ (1,600 calls a year, all volunteer, ALS agency)
http://caryems.org/ (16,000 calls a year)

And there are a couple volunteer EMS agencies in NYC, including one where the majority of the homicides in NYC occur, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford-Stuyvesant_Volunteer_Ambulance_Corps

The problem with just posting call volume is, compared to large paid depts, those numbers are small. Most volunteer agencies are smaller so those call volumes do actually equate to a busy system.

Eastchester EMS is a volunteer agency with 2 or 3 BLS units and 1 ALS fly car. They run 2500 calls per year.

We have no Volunteer EMS in my area, just Volunteer fire depts with EMS, 2 of which I run on.

NPO said:

The problem with just posting call volume is, compared to large paid depts, those numbers are small. Most volunteer agencies are smaller so those call volumes do actually equate to a busy system.

Eastchester EMS is a volunteer agency with 2 or 3 BLS units and 1 ALS fly car. They run 2500 calls per year.

Click to expand...

That's a partially accurate statement. Large call volumes indicate a busy system (FDNY for example), where overall, they handle a lot of calls. But if you want to see how busy the actual units are, you need to look at runs per hour (UHU), at which point you will see that many of the trucks in those busy systems aren't as busy as some of the smaller systems (such as FDNY)

I don't think you will find many 100% volunteer EMS agencies in the urban areas that are 100% volunteer and 100% in operation 24/7. There are some volunteer agencies that still operate in urban areas (areas that were historically covered by volunteers, who now have a primary area and are backed up by a larger paid service) , but even those have started to put paid staff on because of rising call volumes and declining volunteers available during the daytime.