North Savo cuts rescue staff as union warns of rising risks

North Savo Wellbeing Services County will cut 13.7 full-time equivalent positions from its rescue and safety services next year, Yle reports. The cuts will mean that some shifts have fewer rescue workers than before.

Rescue director Jukka Koponen said the reductions would be implemented by leaving vacant posts unfilled and not extending fixed-term contracts.

He said the cuts would not affect how quickly help reaches an incident. Rescue workers would travel to the scene just as quickly whether a shift had two, three or four workers scheduled, he said.

However, having fewer workers could affect what they are able to do before additional assistance arrives, Koponen said.

The North Savo rescue service currently has about 250 full-time rescue workers and 34 substitutes. It also has around 400 contract rescue workers. About 12 full-time equivalent positions and 1.7 substitute positions will be cut next year.

Union warns of increased danger

Jari Koivuluoma, chair of the Finnish Association of Rescue Professionals SPAL, said the cuts would be visible in the public’s access to assistance. He described the planned reductions in North Savo as significant.

According to Koivuluoma, it is already common in Kuopio for a fire engine to have only two rescue workers on a shift.

Fewer workers make rescue operations more difficult, he said. At a traffic accident, rescue workers may need to help injured people, direct traffic and secure the scene at the same time. Two workers cannot do all of this before additional help arrives.

At least four rescue workers are also needed for safe smoke-diving operations, Koivuluoma said. He added that the work was becoming increasingly dangerous and that rescue workers sometimes tried to help immediately even when occupational safety rules would require them to wait for reinforcements.

Shift staffing is not the main focus of supervision

In Finland, the Permits and Supervisory Agency is responsible for overseeing rescue services. Tero Kuusisto, head of the agency’s rescue services unit, said the number of rescue workers on individual shifts was not the authority’s primary focus.

Instead, it monitors how quickly rescue workers arrive at the scene and with what level of staffing. There is no rule in rescue services equivalent to the staffing requirement for healthcare workers that would specify how many rescue workers must be stationed at each fire station, Kuusisto said.

It is normal for rescue personnel to be alerted from several fire stations so that the required operational capacity can be assembled at an incident, he said.

The agency will conduct supervisory visits in all wellbeing services counties this autumn. It will publish assessments of the 2025 level of service in October, and staffing numbers will also be discussed during the visits.

Kuusisto said the biggest challenges in eastern Finland were the ageing of contract firefighters and the small population base for recruitment in sparsely populated areas. Professional fire services also face recruitment challenges, even though enough rescue workers are graduating.

“The question is whether rescue workers find jobs in the wellbeing services counties where they are most needed,” Kuusisto said.