Imagine how you’d feel if your house catches fire and you call the local volunteer fire department and no one is volunteering. That’s what could yet happen if the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s latest proposed regulations go into effect. They are meeting a backlash from volunteer firefighters, who fear the proposed rules will lead to a closing fire departments and spark a “mass exodus” of volunteers.

We don’t doubt OSHA’s “good intentions” to overhaul the outdated regulations and protect firefighters from on-the-job hazards. Yet the disastrous rollout of the proposed rules shows why unelected bureaucrats at Washington — many of whom have likely never seen the inside of a fire truck — shouldn’t be imposing uninformed and national mandates on fire departments that have vastly different resources and needs.