Fire and police departments are facing serious staffing shortages. The same goes for the building trades. The military is just now coming out of a period of shortfalls, too.

The way Columbus Fire Chief Charles Yarbrough sees it, the hiring challenge his department faces is only exacerbated by its hiring requirements.

During Wednesday’s City Council work session, Yarbrough made his case for lowering the minimum age for city firefighters from 21 to 18, which is the standard for most firefighters in the state.

Fire departments draw from the same hiring pool as police, building trades and the military. Allowing 18-year-olds to become firefighters puts them on equal footing with the building trades and military, where 18-year-olds have been eligible for hire all along. It gives fire departments an advantage over police departments, which maintain a 21-year-old requirement.

At a time when high schools are providing more training to make graduates job-ready in the vocational trades, it makes sense for fire departments to join that effort, something many fire departments across the country are doing with junior firefighter programs geared toward 14- to 17-year-olds.

The debate over whether the minimum age for firefighters should be 18 or 21 usually balances the need for staffing levels against the need for life experience and maturity.

While 18 is the standard for most departments, many major metropolitan areas require recruits to be 21 before they can be officially hired.

The arguments for lowering the age to 18 are compelling. The lower age requirement makes high school graduates almost instantly eligible for hire. As the military learned long ago, younger recruits are often more adaptable to the rigid discipline and team culture that fire departments require. Finally, firefighting is an incredibly strenuous job, and 18- to 20-year-olds are often at their physical peak in terms of recovery and cardiovascular health.

That is not to say there aren’t arguments for keeping the age requirement at 21.

One important factor is maturity and life experience. Firefighters witness traumatic events, including severe injuries and death. Critics of the 18-year-old requirement argue that the human brain, which handles decision-making and impulse control, isn’t fully developed until the mid-20s. In the day-to-day requirements of the job, those younger than 21 are limited in some situations. Fire engines and trucks require specialized insurance. It is often significantly more expensive — or legally complex — to insure a driver under the age of 21 to operate a multiton emergency vehicle.

In that vein, as modern firefighters are called upon to provide medical attention during calls, EMT training is an essential skill, one that 18-year-olds generally don’t have.

Firefighters need to be able to meet all the demands of the job, something that can be problematic for 18-year-olds.

While there are arguments to be made for both age requirements, for a fire department facing serious manpower shortages and stiff competition for candidates, the benefits of younger eligibility are worth whatever difficulties come with it.

The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.