The City of Searcy Fire Department is an all hazards organization committed to providing excellence in fire and life safety services for the citizens and visitors of our community through fire prevention, fire suppression, rescue, disaster preparedness, public education, and emergency medical response services.
Searcy Fire Department seems to echo a lot of other sentiments on this website. The people on the ground are great to work with, but the administration can be tough to deal with sometimes. And the city council? Well again, echoing other sentiments on here, can be disrespectful on a good day and outright hostile for the rest of them. The sentiment that becomes more and more obvious every day is that if they could get away with turning us into a volunteer fire department, they absolutely would. But let me start at the beginning.
From the outside looking in, it’s a wonderful place to work. Everyone treats each other with at least the baseline amount of respect, from the chiefs to the captains and on down the chain. You live in Searcy and need to catch your kids’ ball game at 5 in the afternoon? We will see you when you get back, better yet, how about the crew go with you on the engine and hang out so you don’t have to use comp time or leave, just check with them first if it’s OK.
Need to head home for a family emergency? Let us know if you need anything. And on it goes. There is a surprising amount of latitude given by the chain of command in order for you to take care of your personal business. But scratch the surface just a little harder and you will see the veneer comes off quite easily.
Maintenance on the vehicles and buildings is non existent and utilizes the ethos “just do it ourselves, to save the city money” as if they had not heard of an annual budget request. So you get front line vehicles with gremlins galore as there is no continuity of maintenance performed and the “mechanics” working on them are firefighters with the most knowledge of how an internal combustion engine works. Which is not a hell of a lot, hence they would be mechanics and not firefighters.
The pay at Searcy Fire Department is absolutely abysmal and quite easily the lowest in the state, outside of a volunteer department. The unpaid ones. This is the first job I have ever worked at, that for each subsequent year that I work there I take less home. And I have received no less than 3-4 pay raises in the past 3 1/2 years. This is primarily due to the city council, after a long and protracted battle to even get a pay raise, coincidentally announce VIA EMAIL, that the cost of health insurance is going up and they are so sorry but it seems to be roughly the amount that the raise was. Wage stagnation is the council catch phrase of the week/month/year. And the fact that full time department employees NEED to get a second job, not because they WANT to, should be a point of utter embarrassment on the city’s behalf. But it’s not even given a second thought. But don’t worry, they will keep your mind off of it with endless busy work and using the engines and tower as ad-hoc city maintenance vehicles in lieu of paying contractors to do the job or even getting the city employee/departments job it ACTUALLY is to do it. The workload is increasing, but the commensurate pay to reflect this is decreasing.
This is compounded even further by the admin staff, who were all firefighters BEFORE we started running medicals, so still only have that frame of reference, who will sign the crews up for all manner of ridiculous things around the city, such as sitting out front of furniture stores for 3-6 hours so kids can climb all over the engine, or sending them on useless 3 hour courses run by random people who come through the city, eg a 3 hour long course on electrical vehicle maintenance, all while being on shift and still having to respond to calls. Electrical vehicle maintenance. Nothing to do with the fire side of lithium batteries. I am not kidding, we were signed up for that idiocy.
Do you like mowing lawns whilst watching the Streets Department across the road getting the community service people to mow theirs? You’re in luck with Searcy Fire, because we got you covered. No matter that you could be training/working out or resting after unending lift assist calls, fire alarms and the odd fire through the night. Hell, if you’re really keen on it, bring your own zero turn in and do it.
We are consistently understaffed and the city council refuses to hire positions as they open up when people leave, so you will generally be doing the job that is the one above yours, eg a Firefighter will be a driver, Lieutenant will be a Captain etc. and this will go on for months at a time. All the while still being paid for the position below it. Because if you want to actually be laughed at like you were doing a comedic stand up routine you will put forward the notion that maybe a higher duties allowance be considered.
Overtime is constantly offered in direct relation to this issue, but then the council will get in an uproar over the overtime budget being blown out and place a cap on comp time. Because of a problem they themselves have created. The absolute text book case of insanity and ineptitude.
Training can be considered basic at best and external courses are rarely offered, because as above: “do it ourselves, to save the city money”. It should be the official Searcy Fire motto. It also has a lot to do with the critical staffing issues. We quite simply don’t have the ability to let people go.
All in all, it has the potential to be a phenomenal place to work, it truly does. If there was just a bit more pride taken in the role that we have within the city itself and the responsibility that we all have to the community and learn to stand up for ourselves against the ever increasing corruption that is the city council it could truly shine. But until our chief truly takes the reigns and grows a pair and decides to lead, it won’t happen for quite a while.
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1 Reviews on “Searcy Fire Department”
Searcy Fire Department seems to echo a lot of other sentiments on this website. The people on the ground are great to work with, but the administration can be tough to deal with sometimes. And the city council? Well again, echoing other sentiments on here, can be disrespectful on a good day and outright hostile for the rest of them. The sentiment that becomes more and more obvious every day is that if they could get away with turning us into a volunteer fire department, they absolutely would. But let me start at the beginning.
From the outside looking in, it’s a wonderful place to work. Everyone treats each other with at least the baseline amount of respect, from the chiefs to the captains and on down the chain. You live in Searcy and need to catch your kids’ ball game at 5 in the afternoon? We will see you when you get back, better yet, how about the crew go with you on the engine and hang out so you don’t have to use comp time or leave, just check with them first if it’s OK.
Need to head home for a family emergency? Let us know if you need anything. And on it goes. There is a surprising amount of latitude given by the chain of command in order for you to take care of your personal business. But scratch the surface just a little harder and you will see the veneer comes off quite easily.
Maintenance on the vehicles and buildings is non existent and utilizes the ethos “just do it ourselves, to save the city money” as if they had not heard of an annual budget request. So you get front line vehicles with gremlins galore as there is no continuity of maintenance performed and the “mechanics” working on them are firefighters with the most knowledge of how an internal combustion engine works. Which is not a hell of a lot, hence they would be mechanics and not firefighters.
The pay at Searcy Fire Department is absolutely abysmal and quite easily the lowest in the state, outside of a volunteer department. The unpaid ones. This is the first job I have ever worked at, that for each subsequent year that I work there I take less home. And I have received no less than 3-4 pay raises in the past 3 1/2 years. This is primarily due to the city council, after a long and protracted battle to even get a pay raise, coincidentally announce VIA EMAIL, that the cost of health insurance is going up and they are so sorry but it seems to be roughly the amount that the raise was. Wage stagnation is the council catch phrase of the week/month/year. And the fact that full time department employees NEED to get a second job, not because they WANT to, should be a point of utter embarrassment on the city’s behalf. But it’s not even given a second thought. But don’t worry, they will keep your mind off of it with endless busy work and using the engines and tower as ad-hoc city maintenance vehicles in lieu of paying contractors to do the job or even getting the city employee/departments job it ACTUALLY is to do it. The workload is increasing, but the commensurate pay to reflect this is decreasing.
This is compounded even further by the admin staff, who were all firefighters BEFORE we started running medicals, so still only have that frame of reference, who will sign the crews up for all manner of ridiculous things around the city, such as sitting out front of furniture stores for 3-6 hours so kids can climb all over the engine, or sending them on useless 3 hour courses run by random people who come through the city, eg a 3 hour long course on electrical vehicle maintenance, all while being on shift and still having to respond to calls. Electrical vehicle maintenance. Nothing to do with the fire side of lithium batteries. I am not kidding, we were signed up for that idiocy.
Do you like mowing lawns whilst watching the Streets Department across the road getting the community service people to mow theirs? You’re in luck with Searcy Fire, because we got you covered. No matter that you could be training/working out or resting after unending lift assist calls, fire alarms and the odd fire through the night. Hell, if you’re really keen on it, bring your own zero turn in and do it.
We are consistently understaffed and the city council refuses to hire positions as they open up when people leave, so you will generally be doing the job that is the one above yours, eg a Firefighter will be a driver, Lieutenant will be a Captain etc. and this will go on for months at a time. All the while still being paid for the position below it. Because if you want to actually be laughed at like you were doing a comedic stand up routine you will put forward the notion that maybe a higher duties allowance be considered.
Overtime is constantly offered in direct relation to this issue, but then the council will get in an uproar over the overtime budget being blown out and place a cap on comp time. Because of a problem they themselves have created. The absolute text book case of insanity and ineptitude.
Training can be considered basic at best and external courses are rarely offered, because as above: “do it ourselves, to save the city money”. It should be the official Searcy Fire motto. It also has a lot to do with the critical staffing issues. We quite simply don’t have the ability to let people go.
All in all, it has the potential to be a phenomenal place to work, it truly does. If there was just a bit more pride taken in the role that we have within the city itself and the responsibility that we all have to the community and learn to stand up for ourselves against the ever increasing corruption that is the city council it could truly shine. But until our chief truly takes the reigns and grows a pair and decides to lead, it won’t happen for quite a while.