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“Out of Many,One"
“Like a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes"

THE UNITED STATES FIRE DEPARTMENT RESERVE CORPS
NATIONAL COMMAND

THE UNITED STATES FIRE DEPARTMENT RESERVE CORPS
MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES COMMAND

Become a Chaplaincy Volunteer Reservist Member

Are you called to provide compassionate spiritual care, emotional support, and a ministry of presence to first responders, support personnel, their families, and the communities they protect?

The United States Fire Department Reserve Corps (USFDRC) welcomes qualified chaplains, clergy members, and recognized spiritual-care providers to serve as Chaplaincy Volunteer Reservist Members within our Chaplaincy Services Command (CSC).

Volunteer Reservist Members may contribute through spiritual care, crisis support, education, ceremonial assistance, community outreach, and disaster-response activities. All services must remain within the member’s education, training, experience, religious or professional credentials, USFDRC assignment, and legally authorized scope of service.

Spiritual Care and Educational Services

Chaplaincy Volunteer Reservist Members may assist with:

  • Confidential and compassionate spiritual care for first responders, support personnel, and their families.
  • A nonjudgmental ministry of presence during times of stress, illness, injury, grief, or personal hardship.
  • Education concerning spiritual wellness, resilience, moral distress, compassion fatigue, grief, and healthy coping.
  • Workshops and presentations concerning the spiritual and emotional effects of emergency-service work.
  • Family-support and relationship-enrichment education.
  • Grief, bereavement, and loss education.
  • Suicide-prevention awareness and recognition of warning signs.
  • Education for supervisors and organizational leaders on recognizing spiritual or emotional distress and connecting personnel with appropriate resources.
  • Development or review of spiritual-care articles, resource guides, training materials, and public-awareness content.
  • Interfaith and religious-literacy education that promotes dignity, mutual respect, and cultural understanding.
  • Assistance with wellness events, remembrance activities, resource fairs, community outreach, and educational programs.
  • Guidance on creating spiritually supportive and culturally respectful organizational environments.

Emotional and Spiritual Support

Within their authorized roles, Chaplaincy Volunteer Reservist Members may provide:

  • Compassionate listening and supportive conversation.
  • Spiritual encouragement consistent with the individual’s expressed beliefs, values, and preferences.
  • Prayer, sacred readings, religious rites, or spiritual practices when requested and when the chaplain is qualified or authorized to provide them.
  • Support during illness, injury, hospitalization, family emergencies, retirement, or other significant life events.
  • Grief and bereavement support following a death or serious loss.
  • Supportive wellness check-ins that are not represented as psychotherapy or clinical treatment.
  • Psychological First Aid when properly trained.
  • General coping information following stressful or potentially traumatic events.
  • Support for families affected by the occupational demands of emergency service.
  • Referral to an individual’s own faith leader, congregation, spiritual community, or culturally appropriate spiritual-care provider.
  • Referral to licensed mental health professionals, healthcare providers, employee assistance programs, peer-support teams, crisis services, or community resources when needs exceed the chaplain’s role.
  • Support that respectfully includes individuals who identify with a particular faith tradition, multiple traditions, or no religious tradition.

 

Spiritual care shall always be voluntary, person-centered, culturally respectful, and responsive to the beliefs and preferences of the person receiving support.

Ceremonial and Memorial Support

When appropriately credentialed and officially assigned, members may assist with:

  • Memorial services, funerals, celebrations of life, and remembrance ceremonies.
  • Line-of-duty death observances and commemorative events.
  • Hospital, bedside, or end-of-life spiritual support when requested and permitted.
  • Invocations, benedictions, dedications, promotions, retirements, graduations, and other official ceremonies.
  • Honor-guard and family-support coordination within the chaplain’s assigned responsibilities.
  • Spiritual support for injured personnel and their families.
  • Assistance to families during notification, funeral planning, mourning, and recovery.
  • Coordination with the family’s selected clergy member, faith community, funeral provider, and authorized public-safety representatives.

 

Participation in death notifications may occur only when specifically authorized, appropriately trained, and coordinated with law enforcement, fire department leadership, medical authorities, or another agency having jurisdiction.

Professional Scope and Service Limitations

Volunteer status does not expand, replace, or override a professional license. Each Volunteer Reservist Member is personally responsible for understanding and complying with the laws, regulations, ethical standards, supervision requirements, and licensing restrictions applicable to the location and method through which services are provided.

Unless specifically authorized by law, the applicable licensing authority, and the USFDRC, volunteers shall not:

  • Diagnose or independently treat a mental health or substance-use disorder.
  • Establish a therapist-client or other clinical treatment relationship.
  • Provide psychotherapy, formal counseling, or continuing clinical care.
  • Conduct psychological testing or formal clinical assessments.
  • Prescribe, recommend, administer, or manage medication.
  • Represent educational or supportive services as emergency psychiatric care.
  • Practice in a state or jurisdiction where they are not legally authorized to provide the applicable professional service.
  • Provide telehealth services across state lines without confirming legal authorization.
  • Maintain private clinical records or use USFDRC participation to solicit clients.
  • Provide services beyond their education, training, experience, credentials, assignment, or demonstrated competency.

 

When a person presents an immediate danger to themselves or others, experiences a medical emergency, or requires services beyond the volunteer’s authorized role, the member must follow USFDRC emergency procedures and promptly connect the individual with 911, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, local emergency services, or another appropriate licensed provider.

Disaster Spiritual-Care Services

Members who possess the appropriate credentials, disaster-response training, assignment, and jurisdictional authorization may support:

  • Spiritual and emotional care for disaster survivors, responders, support personnel, and affected families.
  • A calm and compassionate ministry of presence at disaster locations.
  • Psychological First Aid when properly trained.
  • Immediate spiritual support and practical resource connection.
  • Disaster-related grief, loss, stress, and coping education.
  • Support for displaced individuals and families.
  • Responder resilience, rest, and fatigue-management education.
  • Community outreach and distribution of spiritual-care and recovery information.
  • Support at shelters, family assistance centers, hospitals, staging areas, responder rehabilitation locations, reception centers, or other authorized disaster operations.
  • Identification and referral of individuals who may need behavioral health, medical, social-service, legal, or crisis assistance.
  • Coordination with local faith communities and recognized disaster-response organizations.
  • Assistance in locating culturally and religiously appropriate resources.
  • Support for memorial observances and community remembrance activities.
  • Advocacy for the diverse religious, spiritual, cultural, and nonreligious needs of affected populations.
  • Consultation with incident leadership concerning general spiritual-care needs, responder wellness, and culturally respectful practices.
  • Recovery-oriented spiritual support following natural disasters, mass-casualty incidents, acts of violence, public-health emergencies, or other critical events.


All disaster assignments must be performed within the established incident command structure and under the direction of the USFDRC or the agency having joint command
jurisdiction.

Professional Scope and Service Limitations

Volunteer status does not expand, replace, or override a chaplain’s ordination, commission, endorsement, certification, professional license, or other credential. Each Chaplaincy Volunteer Reservist Member is responsible for understanding and complying with the laws, ethical standards, credentialing requirements, religious-body requirements, and USFDRC policies applicable to the services provided.

Unless separately qualified and legally authorized, Chaplaincy Volunteer Reservist Members shall not:

  • Present spiritual care as a substitute for medical treatment, mental health care, emergency assistance, or other professional services.
  • Conduct religious rites or ceremonies for which they are not properly authorized.
  • Attempt to convert, pressure, manipulate, or impose religious beliefs upon another person.
  • Discriminate based on religion, denomination, race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, military status, or any other protected characteristic.
  • Disparage another person’s religious, spiritual, cultural, or nonreligious beliefs.
  • Promise absolute confidentiality when disclosure is required by law or USFDRC safeguarding and emergency procedures.
  • Use confidential information for personal, religious, political, organizational, or financial advantage.
  • Solicit donations, recruit individuals into a religious organization, or distribute sectarian materials without authorization.
  • Use USFDRC participation to obtain private clients, congregants, customers, or personal benefits.
  • Perform services beyond their training, credentials, assignment, demonstrated competency, or authorized role.

 

When a person presents an immediate danger to themselves or others, reports suspected abuse or neglect, experiences a medical emergency, or requires assistance beyond the chaplain’s authorized role, the member must follow applicable law and USFDRC emergency, safeguarding, mandatory-reporting, and referral procedures. This may include promptly connecting the individual with 911, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, law enforcement, emergency medical services, child or adult protective services, a licensed mental health professional, or another appropriate resource.

Confidentiality and Trust

Chaplaincy Volunteer Reservist Members must safeguard private information and maintain discretion in all verbal, written, and electronic communications.

Membership Expectations

Applicants may be required to provide evidence of current ordination, commission, ecclesiastical endorsement, chaplaincy certification, professional licensure, or recognition by an established religious or spiritual-care organization, as applicable to the position.

Membership requirements may also include:

  • Verification that credentials are current and in good standing.
  • Relevant theological, pastoral-care, chaplaincy, counseling, or spiritual-care education.
  • Experience serving first responders, military personnel, healthcare environments, correctional institutions, disaster operations, or community organizations.
  • Background screening and reference verification.
  • Psychological First Aid and disaster spiritual-care training.
  • National Incident Management System and Incident Command System training.
  • Religious-literacy, cultural-competency, and safeguarding education.
  • Suicide-prevention and crisis-referral training.
  • Continuing education and demonstrated competency.
  • Professional or general liability coverage when applicable.
 

Chaplaincy Volunteer Reservist Members must comply with USFDRC policies concerning confidentiality, informed consent, professional conduct, safeguarding, mandatory reporting, documentation, incident command, nondiscrimination, conflicts of interest, referrals, public communications, and the appropriate use of USFDRC credentials and insignia.

 Join the Chaplaincy Services Command and help provide compassionate, respectful, and inclusive spiritual care to the people who dedicate their lives to protecting our
communities.

History

The origins of The United States Fire Department Reserve Corps date to September 11, 2001, when at approximately 8:46 a.m. on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Then, 17 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767 United Airlines Flight 175 appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center, and sliced into the south tower at about the 60th floor. The World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. Close to 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center and its vicinity, including a staggering 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher floors. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 other people were treated for injuries, many severe.

As millions watched in horror the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington, D.C., and slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:37 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to a structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building. All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon, along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.

Small American flag on engraved memorial

Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane United Flight 93 was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airphone calls to the ground. Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection. The passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected of having attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field in western Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. All 45 people aboard were killed. America was under attack.

When Mr. Carmelo Baez returned from serving as a civilian volunteer from the New Jersey Shore as the Emergency Medical Services Unified Operation Chief responsible for organizing the Interagency Incident Action Plan to receive victims and patients by boats from Manhattan and transfer them to statewide hospitals and facilities. Including his services as a civilian volunteer on September 13, 14, and 15, 2001, as a Search and Rescue Team Leader at ground zero.

Smiling uniformed officer with medals
Mr. Baez was convinced that the United States has an urgent and compelling need for an organization of public-spirited volunteers, knowledgeable about the importance of public safety and skilled in the support and development of fire services, pre-hospital care, and emergency management services to our communities and the maintenance of our nation security. Mr. Baez envisioned a military-styled National Volunteer Fire Department civilian organization modeling the fine traditions of the United States Army Reserve and the American Fire Services combining both noble institutions with the ability to mobilize America’s civilians who can be called to duty in the event of an emergency, disaster, or when the nation is in need of support. Mr. Baez shared the idea with his wife Mrs. Blanca E. Baez and their two children Carolina and Andre Baez and with others. While residing in the State of Florida, Mr. Baez, with the assistance of his family, organized and incorporated The United States Fire Department Reserve Corps on April 29, 2010, on the same date as Mr. Baez’s birthday as a present for his beloved family and his love for our country. Mr. Baez founded The United States Fire Department Reserve Corps as a gift to the American people and to honor all those who have served and are currently serving in the United States Armed Forces and their families as well as First Responders and their families who have made and continue to make the ultimate sacrifice for their families, communities, and country during and after September 11, 2001.
The United States Fire Department Reserve Corps became the first National Volunteer Reservist Fire Department in the United States. It was established under the corporation laws of the State of Florida, registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c) (3), as a non-governmental, (NGO) not-for-profit, charitable, humanitarian, educational, and public safety organization. The United States Fire Department Reserve Corps reservists’ members are backup forces who are ready to move to active duty when the local, municipality, county, state, or nation is in need. The mission and motto of The United States Fire Department Reserve Corps are “to render first aid to the ill, injured, and infirm and to relieve the pain, suffering, and discomfort of those in need of assistance. To help educate people to prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies in the United States and worldwide if requested.” Our motto is “E Pluribus Unum” the same motto as the United States, in Latin meaning “Out of many, one”. The uniting of military service, first responders, and community members to become one force in the first National Volunteer Reservist Fire Department.
Smiling police officer and firefighter standing together