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Here in Maine a large number of departments are volunteer, didn't know shortages were becoming an issue. If you got a tax break on your property, would you volunteer? What other incentives do you think there should be?

Maine’s volunteer fire departments increasingly are having a hard time finding enough people to fill their ranks, putting them in danger of being unable to respond quickly to calls. This is a problem for ambulance and emergency medical services as well.

Lawmakers this year will consider pay increases, tax credits and a pension system to entice new recruits. These could be helpful in the short term, but given the scale of the problem, it will likely take a larger solution. One option that must be discussed is regionalization. Mutual aid agreements among towns fulfill this role to some extent, but by combining and professionalizing departments, perhaps at the county level, there would be a larger pool of potential respondents.

In the early 1990s, there were about 12,000 firefighters in the state, including professionals and volunteers. That number has dropped to about 8,000, and the 33 percent decrease in personnel has meant that fire departments everywhere are feeling the strain.

This is a national problem. According to the National Volunteer Fire Council, there were nearly 900,000 volunteer firefighters nationwide in 1984. Although they are called volunteers, most get a stipend. By 2013, the number had dropped to just over 786,000. The average age of volunteer firefighters is increasing as well, especially for the smallest communities, where more than 30 percent of firefighters are over 50. In 1987, only 16 percent of volunteer firefighters in communities with fewer than 2,500 residents were over 50.

Most worrisome is that emergency call volumes continue to increase. Fire departments responded to more than 31 million calls in 2013, according to National Volunteer Fire Council figures, compared with fewer than 12 million calls in 1986.

“We can blame it on a lot of things,” Ken Desmond, president of the Maine State Federation of Firefighters, said of the staffing decline. “Commitments, the time to train, having two people in the household working … it would be a hell if we ever had a call when no one responds.”

That fear — a fire when no one responds — keeps fire chiefs up at night.

Two fires last month in Brooks, one in which a house was leveled and another that sent a homeowner to the hospital with burns, especially concern Brooks Fire Chief Jeff Archer. They both happened in the daytime — the hardest time to find enough firefighters to do the job.

“Folks are working,” Archer said. “We’re basically a sleeper community. But even at nighttime, you struggle.”

A shortage of manpower isn’t the only problem. Many volunteer firefighters work outside the communities where they live. If a fire or EMS call comes in, even if they are able to leave work, they must travel many miles before getting to a fire scene or station. By then, it may be too late.

Lawmakers’ consideration of a bill to provide up to $750 in property tax benefits to those who volunteer for local fire and emergency medical services departments and another to create a pension system for these volunteers will highlight the problem. It is unclear whether the measures, if passed, would help solve it.

Surprisingly, the National Volunteer Fire Council can’t point to any innovative approaches to resolve the problem other than a variety of recruiting strategies. It recently received a $2.5 million Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to work on this issue. It is surveying states and fire departments across the country to see what they are doing about the firefighter shortage. The results of this work, which is belated but needed, could help Maine decide what solutions to pursue.

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