West Virginia Volunteer Fire Departments Protecting the Public Regardless of Loss of Insurance

The local volunteer firefighters of Parkersburg, West Virginia keep fighting fires and protecting their community despite the fact that their departments will be losing their liability insurance coverage.

Volunteer chiefs, captains and other fire officials are due to loose their “Deliberate Intent” insurance coverage, an extension of Safety and Worker’s Compensation, as of September 1 of this year. This means they will no longer have immunity from being sued and will be left vulnerable to law suits. Fire officials could be held personally liable for any fire fighter “deliberately” sent into harms way and is injured or killed as a result.

The Parkersburg volunteer fire department is not the only volunteer department slated to lose their liability coverage. According to State officials 129 departments will also be losing their coverage. By the end of this year every volunteer department in West Virginia will be working without this vital insurance.

Despite the fact that a few of these volunteer department are threatening to strike, most of the others are still planning to continue with the job of protecting their communities with or without the extended Safety and Worker’s Compensation coverage.

"The chiefs are going to have to meet to discuss this but our department is not on board with a strike,” said Kim Marshall of the Deerwalk Volunteer Fire Department. “We expect people to recognize there's a problem, come up with a solution and keep moving. How do we say we are going to go on strike; how could you live with yourself? I've been doing this for 35 years. It's just not in us not to respond. We are not a union. There have been firefighter’s unions going on strike but when you are a volunteer and it's your neighbor are you going to sit in a recliner and not go? Of course not. We aren't being paid. We could be sued personally. It doesn't matter. You have to go. We can talk about strikes and not responding, but in reality the Legislature needs to put in an amendment and cure this problem and stop the silliness.”

Marshall’s frustration continued as he met with local insurance representative seeking some solutions but left without any success. He went on to say, “It's the deliberate intent language that makes it. If you order two men at a scene to go into a structure to do an interior attack on a fire that is a deliberate act and fire officials and others will be personally liable to be sued as individuals if the firefighter is injured."

Although these fire officials are deeply concerned about losing their insurance coverage and recognize that not having it could have serious consequences, they are still willing to put themselves on the line for their community’s safety.

Jay Parsons, Chief of the Mineral Wells Volunteer Fire department summed it up best by adding, "We have too many residents and too many families. It is a bad situation. We hope the county commission does something at least; maybe provide coverage until the State gets it worked out. That would be a big help."