Butler City Council approved the promotion of three firefighters from part-time to full-time status at its meeting last week.

This brings the total number of firefighters to 21, making it the largest number the department has had in a decade.

Council used money from a three-year, $622,500 Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant received in 2018 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency aimed at covering firefighter salary costs.

Without a doubt, this is money well spent by the city.

In recent years, communities across the state have struggled to staff departments in the wake of a lack of younger people signing up to be volunteer firefighters and less funding to pay for full-time employees.

Fire Engineering, a national magazine focusing on issues relating to fire and emergency services personnel, reports approximately 96 percent of Pennsylvania's firefighters are volunteers. Shockingly, a legislative study last year found that the number of volunteer firefighters in the state has dropped from about 300,000 in the mid-1970s to less than 40,000 presently.

And a 2019 National Volunteer Fire Council study found that while 63 percent of volunteer firefighters serving smaller U.S. towns were under age 40 in 1987 and 54 percent of them were below 40 in 2000, 53 percent of them were over age 40 in 2017. The number of young volunteers continues to drop, so departments across the state and nation need to figure out new ways to recruit and retain them.

Earlier this year, supervisors in Center Township heard a proposal to unite several municipalities into a cooperative organization that would station several paid firefighters in the region to offset the increasing calls for fires and diminished volunteer staffing.

Last year, nine volunteer firefighters were granted tax credits at a Summit Township supervisors meeting. The exemptions were aimed at staving off the decreasing numbers of volunteer firefighters in that community.

In other words, local municipalities are doing what they can to enable fire departments to respond to emergency calls — which have remained about the same in number — with an increasingly smaller number of firefighters.

In light of all this, it's heartening to hear that Butler is able to change the status of several of its firefighters — all of whom are “qualified individuals,” Butler Fire Chief Christopher Switala said — from part-time to full-time.

This funding could go a long way in keeping Butler's residents safe.

Any incentives that municipalities can offer to encourage new firefighters to enlist are highly encouraged.

News coverage about the state's firefighter shortage has referred to the situation as a “crisis.” We hope that Butler's approval of an upgrade for the three firefighters' employment status provides the necessary coverage for the town, and that other communities and their fire departments are able to come up with their own means of recruiting new members.