Fewer People Are Applying to Be Firefighters on Maui

"There's a line out the door." For years that has been an informal reason given for not raising firefighter pay. The reasoning goes that the job is so desirable, so competitive, that compensation does not need to keep up. The applicant numbers Maui's firefighters have shared tell a different story. So does the list of what the job asks of the people who take it.

The Line Is Getting Shorter

The "line out the door" is measurable, and on Maui it has shrunk. The figures below come from a current Maui Division representative with direct knowledge of the department's entrance-exam records. The Division says its 2025 figures come from Department of Personnel Services (DPS) records. The official 2017 figure was requested under Hawaii's public records law (UIPA), and according to the Division, DPS denied that request on the ground that the records are "not readily available." Later requests by email, phone, and voicemail had gone unanswered as of mid-September 2026. Read these as the Division's figures, not as a county record.

Two more numbers come from the same 2025 count. About 70 percent of applicants (477 of 682) showed up to test, and about 41 percent of the people who tested (196 of 477) passed. Both are our arithmetic on the Division's figures.

Two limits matter. First, we searched news reports and county records and found no other outlet or document that repeats these counts, so they rest on one source until the county answers. Second, the 2017 count is described as "applicants" and the 2025 count as people who "applied to take the written exam." We cannot confirm the two years were counted the same way.

How Maui Hires, and What the County Publishes

The county's own pages explain how a person becomes a firefighter, and they explain why a shrinking pool matters.

• The county's employment page says the department "hires new fire fighters only when there are enough vacancies to fill a recruit class." The recruit class runs eighteen weeks.
• The Fire Fighter Trainee job posting that closed on February 1, 2026 lists "Written Examination: 100%" as the entire evaluation. It says applicants who pass stay eligible for one to two years. It does not say what score passes.
• According to the Maui Division, the Fire Department has never used a minimum passing score. Candidates are ranked, and the department hires down the list as positions open. The Division says the Police Department has used a minimum passing score on its entrance exam for many years, and that it confirmed this with the Police Department. We found no published county record that settles either point. For comparison, the Honolulu Police Department publishes its own rule: "Applicants must score a 70 to move forward in the process." Maui's 2017 Police Officer I posting, like the fire posting, lists the written test at 100 percent and states no passing score, so the Maui police comparison rests on the Division's account.
• One person who tested in 2017 recalls that a score in the mid-80s or higher was needed to be picked for the first academy class. That is a recollection, not a record, and we have no published 2017 pass scores to compare against the 2025 figure.

Put together, the practical result is this. When the pool shrinks and hiring goes by rank, the department fills the same jobs from a smaller group of applicants, and some of the people who pass scored in the 50s. That describes 2025. The Maui Division says the recruit class now coming is again reaching down to candidates who scored in the 50s to fill its spots. Whether it is worse than 2017 depends on scores the county has not published.

What the Job Costs the People Who Take It

Every source in this section is a study, statute, contract, or news report we opened and read. Most of the health research is national, and it is labeled that way. Maui data is marked as Maui. None of it shows why any one person chose not to apply. It shows what the job asks of the people who do.

The body: cancer, heart, and injury

A 2014 study in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, by researchers at the federal National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, followed 29,993 career firefighters in San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia through 2009. It found modestly more cancer cases (a ratio of 1.09) and cancer deaths (1.14) than expected for the general U.S. population, while deaths from all causes were at the expected level. A follow-up on the same group found lung cancer and leukemia risk rose modestly with more time spent firefighting, and its authors call the effects small. In 2022, the World Health Organization's cancer agency (IARC) classified occupational exposure as a firefighter as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1). That label describes how strong the evidence is, not how large the risk is.

On the heart, the National Fire Protection Association counted 27 sudden cardiac deaths among 65 on-duty firefighter deaths in 2025. That was the largest single category, and 70 percent of the on-duty heart attacks were in firefighters over 50. The same association estimates 53,575 municipal firefighters were injured on duty in 2024, about 30 percent of them at fires, with strain and overexertion the leading cause on the fireground. It changed how it counts injuries that year, so that number should not be compared with earlier years.

Hawaii's own law already treats these risks as part of the job. Both points below are from the statute text on the legislature's website.

• Cancer. Hawaii Revised Statutes section 386-21.9 covers a firefighter with five or more years of service whose claim for one of several listed cancers is accepted or found compensable. The employer then pays medical care at 110 to 150 percent of the Medicare fee schedule for Hawaii. The list includes leukemia, lymphoma, and cancers of the lung, brain, stomach, bladder, prostate, breast, and female reproductive organs. The full list is in the sources.
• Heart and lungs. Section 88-79 presumes that a disease of the heart, lungs, or respiratory system that permanently disables a firefighter came from the job, unless the contrary is shown by competent evidence. It applies to disability retirement, and only if the firefighter passed an entry physical that showed no sign of the condition.

What was measured on Maui

About a month after the August 2023 fires, federal researchers tested blood from 258 Maui County employees, 178 of them firefighters, for PFAS, a family of long-lasting chemicals. Firefighters had the highest median level, 7.0 micrograms per liter against 5.7 to 6.9 for the other groups. Results were mostly below the clinical screening threshold. One firefighter was above it and was advised to see a health care provider. Firefighters were offered enrollment in the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer, which tracks cancer outcomes over the long term.

Read that carefully. It measured exposure, not illness. There was no earlier baseline, and the researchers write that how much came from the fires compared with other sources "is unclear." It is the only Maui-specific health measurement we found.

The mind: trauma and loss

A 2012 review of 28 studies estimated that 10 percent of rescue workers worldwide had current post-traumatic stress disorder. That figure covers rescue workers in general, and the review found higher rates among ambulance personnel than among firefighters, so it is not a firefighter rate. A 2018 white paper from the Ruderman Family Foundation, using reports made to the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance, counted at least 103 firefighter and EMS suicides in the United States in 2017, compared with 93 firefighters who died in the line of duty that year. That count is voluntary and combines firefighters with EMS workers, so it is not a rate, and it says nothing about Hawaii. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

On Maui, Civil Beat reported in August 2023 that the International Association of Fire Fighters sent five peer support professionals, that firefighters from Lahaina had lost their own homes, and that one firefighter said he and some colleagues had experienced flashbacks since the fires. That is a news report about a few people, days after the fire. We searched for a published study of PTSD, depression, or suicide among Maui or Hawaii firefighters, and for a county page describing a peer-support program, and found neither. That is a search result, not proof that none exists.

Sleep and schedule

The statewide firefighter agreement for 2021 to 2025, as published by the State of Hawaii, sets an average 56-hour week over a nine-week cycle of 24-hour shifts, worked in three platoons. A newer contract may have replaced it. The county's own trainee posting warns of "irregular hours, shift and weekend work, and exposure to hazardous and obnoxious conditions." A 2015 screening of 6,933 firefighters in 66 U.S. departments found that 37.2 percent screened positive for a sleep disorder. A screening is not a diagnosis, and the study shows an association, not a cause. How the schedule and overtime rules work is covered in Sixty-Eight Hours, and what it means for a family in The Family Behind the Badge.

Pay Is the Part the County Sets

The pay side has its own evidence. Hawaii's base-rank firefighters take 28 years to reach the top of the pay scale, the longest of the 37 U.S. departments that publish a conventional step ladder, as set out in The Slowest Step Ladder in the Nation. What a paycheck buys against Hawaii's housing and living costs is in The Cost-of-Living Gap. The wider pay picture is in Hawaii's Two-Tier Public Safety System.

Why a Thin Pipeline Is a Public-Safety Problem

Firefighting in Hawaii is demanding: the terrain, the weather, the remoteness of communities on every island, and the specific hazards of island firefighting all call for qualified local candidates who understand these islands. A firefighter cannot be onboarded in a few weeks. The recruit class alone runs eighteen weeks, and an experienced firefighter carries knowledge of the roads, the water systems, and the communities that cannot be quickly rebuilt.

The county hires only when it has enough vacancies to fill a class, and it draws from a pool that has shrunk. A pipeline that thin makes any gap harder to fill. Where the gaps already sit is mapped in the county's vacancy roster.

What We Do Not Know

• The official numbers. A public-records request for the official 2017 count was denied, and later requests for the counts of applicants, test-takers, passers, and pass scores have gone unanswered.
• Whether 2017 and 2025 were counted the same way. See the limits above.
• Why people did not apply. We found no Hawaii survey. The closest evidence is national and asks current firefighters, not applicants.
• Hawaii health rates. We found no Maui or Hawaii rate for firefighter cancer, heart disease, injury, PTSD, or suicide.
• Whether Maui is alone. A 2024 U.S. Fire Administration workgroup reported about 62,100 fewer firefighters nationwide than in 2010, and said the decline affects career and volunteer departments. That is a headcount, not an applicant count, and it does not show a career applicant collapse everywhere.