We’re told as volunteer firefighters to prioritize work/family but serve community when able. Ppl sometimes sit out activities for a stretch. Important thing is # of ppl able to mobilize when big disasters hit. 80k yen/yr is a cheap cost for that. https://twitter.com/themainichi/status/1343861833321631744

I’ll share a bit more after patrolling tonight.

First, phantom community firefighters exist. The municipalities that administer our activities should develop good systems to confirm that people getting a stipend are doing something of public benefit.

But what's of benefit and the length of our commitment are important points.

Regarding our role: Yes, we respond to fires—avg of once every 2 or 3 weeks in my case. But our role has evolved since the 3/11 disasters to include a lot of disaster prevention, public affairs, and disaster response. I'd say the disaster role is now bigger than firefighting.

It's vital to understand that 消防団 (I call it volunteer firefighting despite the stipend, for reasons explained below) is treated by all involved as a commitment for one's healthy lifetime—most of us will retire from it when we're around 60.

So whether a person has been able to pitch in for the last 3 months is far less important than whether they'll be part of the force for the next few decades, and whether they'll be available to serve the community when a disaster strikes.

Now let's look at the time and other commitments:
We meet as a squad once a month for about 3 hours to maintain our equipment, train in the skills needed to be useful, communicate information, etc.

We respond to fire calls once every 2-3 weeks. We direct traffic, help facilities like nursing homes evacuate large #s of people, fight actual fires, and help the professionals with their work. I'd estimate that an avg call takes 3 hrs before we are back home or at work.

We also participate in annual musters of our community and citywide corps, provide security and assistance for community events like festivals, and go to special skills trainings and competitions. That's a lot of time, and our stipend is around 81,000 yen / yr, depending on rank.

We also get 2,000 yen for responding to a fire. So the stipend is something, but it's far less hourly pay than a conbini job.

Now, one issue with this "phantom" business is the way stipends are handled:

Many squads choose as a group to pool their stipends. When I joined I was offered a choice—I could take mine or I could pool it. But clearly my squad was for pooling, and so was I. With pooled stipends we have dinners together (when there's no pandemic), buy equipment, etc.

We sometimes spend our stipends on a small trip. In any case, it's our money to use as we please.

If there's a phantom, though, it's obviously a benefit to the squad. They do exist. But in minuscule numbers. None in our squad, that's for sure. But ppl go through life stages:

One person in our squad is a software engineer whose wife works as a nurse. She is almost never off right now w/c19, so he's the fulltime parent. He can't firefight, etc. But he will be there if a disaster hits, and after C19 he'll be active again.

Like any org w/long traditions, vol. firefighting in Japan needs some modernization. I'm all for that. But similarly to stimulus checks, I think funding the presence of a tiny # of people who aren't active is better than hurting those who stand ready to help at great sacrifice.

As I mentioned, it's municipalities that need to root out the very few "phantoms," and the way their budgets are determined does not motivate them to do that. But w/the shortage of firefighters = disaster responders, measures should avoid discouraging new recruits from joining.

Regarding whether there are actual ghost who firefight, I only know of our retired sempai who mysteriously leave cases of beer and enormous bottles of sake for us.

Anyway, AMA.

Oh, regarding time commitment: When a typhoon hits, we are awake and mobilized the entire time. In October 2019 that was around 48 hours.

Anyway, I made a thread a while ago about volunteer firefighting to give a bit of insight, if you're interested. https://twitter.com/dwvcd/status/1284743803430002688?s=20