It’s good news that Warren County public safety officials are seeing fewer dropped 911 calls.

That means we’re doing a better job of navigating the challenges that come with having fewer volunteer firefighters manning fire stations throughout the county when emergencies arise. That’s good news, because the struggle to recruit volunteer firefighters to man volunteer fire department ambulances isn’t going to go away any time soon.

Those who need proof need only see the second half of what Ken McCorrison, county public safety director, said during a May Council of Governments meeting – some agencies are only in service 30% of the time, relying on outside agencies more and more often to answer calls in their service territory.

There has been talk of coordinated volunteer fire department recruiting efforts to help individual departments try to find new members. Such an effort couldn’t hurt. That’s true of many of the ideas and tweaks that public safety officials and state lawmakers discuss on a regular basis. Tax breaks, help with the cost of EMS training and creation of a statewide EMS commissioner’s position to serve in the governor’s cabinet would all help. But they don’t solve the basic numbers crunch that faces counties like ours – the land area that needs to be covered by volunteer fire departments isn’t decreasing, but our population is decreasing. And as that population decreases the number of potential volunteer firefighters decreases along with it.

It’s good news that we are dropping fewer calls. Those involved in the volunteer firefighting service have gotten better at managing the shorthanded nature of the volunteer work they perform. But the fact that some departments are out of service 70% of the time shows we aren’t even close to solving the bigger problem posed by our population decreases and the increasing demands on the time of our volunteer firefighters.

As we said – good news, bad news.