On Friday the Vanguard covered a story developing in Los Angeles where the fire chief has made the controversial proposal of transferring firefighters to work on ambulances, given the changing needs of the fire station.
This week, Los Angeles’ fire chief, Brian Cummings, rocked the world with the announcement that he is planning to “reassign dozens of firefighters from engines to rescue ambulances beginning next month to handle an increase in medical emergencies,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
The controversial plan, Chief Cummings said, was needed in order to change the fire department to match the agency’s workload which, like Davis and other communities, “has shifted from fighting fires to primarily responding to calls for emergency medical help. Those calls now account for more than 80% of 911 responses, according to department officials and an independent data analysis by The Times.”
“Fire officials say the proportion of medical emergency calls continues to increase,” the LA Times reported. “In the first two months of this year, emergency medical service calls grew 6.2%, compared with the same time period last year.”
Los Angeles’ number seems relatively high, but last year the San Jose Mercury News reported, “A report by the watchdog panel found that 70 percent of fire department calls are medical emergencies, and just 4 percent are fire-related. But even so, firefighters respond as if they are heading to a fire, sending a crew of three or more on a truck or engine costing an average of $500,000 — five times the cost of an ambulance.”
The OC Watchdog in the Orange County Register writes: “Once upon a time, fire departments were mainly in the business of putting out fires. But that was many decades ago: Less than 2 percent of the Orange County Fire Authority’s calls were to fire emergencies last year, the grand jury found.”
The vast majority of the calls, at least 70 percent, are medical, and in some departments they are as high as 80%.
“This transition from fire emergencies to medical emergencies has not generated major changes in the operation model for responding to these emergencies,” the grand jury wrote. “Each emergency call generally results in both fire trucks and ambulances being dispatched to the site of the emergency regardless of the type of emergency. The emergency response communities have discussed developing new models, but little change has been accomplished.”
“Of the 180,000 incidents reported in Orange County in 2010 by the various fire departments, approximately 134,000 (76%) were for medical emergencies and 44,000 (24%) were for fires and ‘other,’ ” the grand jury wrote. “The Orange County Fire Authority alone reported less than two percent of their 88,227 responses were for ‘Fire/Explosion.’ “
While that is the statewide picture, the question arose about local data, and a reader asked about the actual breakdown of emergency calls for both the city of Davis and the university in terms of fire versus medical emergency calls.
We noted that the 2011 Citygate report placed the percentage of medical calls to be around two-thirds of all calls.
Now for the first time, we have the actual data.
The findings here are interesting. First, it should be noted that, while the fire fighters are claiming 4500 calls for service, the actual number is closer to about 4150 for the three-year average. That comes to 11.4 calls per day, or 3.79 per station.
The three-year average shows that medical calls account for about 65% of all calls, or 7.4 of the 11.4 calls each day. That is followed by automobile accidents which total about one call a day, then you drop down to one every three days for small fires, one every six days or so for first-alarm fires including structure fires, and one every seven days for grass fires, which are obviously concentrated in the dry months.
The bottom line here is that, while Davis has a lower percentage of medical calls than the statewide average, the city has less than one fire, on average, per day. The question should remain as to whether the city’s current plan is cost effective.
As we noted from the grand jury report, for every call for service, firefighters – four on an engine – respond to every call as though they were heading to a fire. The cost for four firefighters is about $700,000 a year. That does not include equipment.
If they are headed to a fire, we can understand. But if they are heading to a medical emergency, we have to believe there is a better and cheaper way to do so.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I realize that three years does not represent definitive data. However, there is the trend of an increasing percentage of medical aide calls. Looking forward, as the population ages which will definitely be the case,
it would seem that designing a system designed for the anticipated increase in medical aide calls would make far more sense than sticking with the current model.
My guess is that if we extended it out we would see fluctuation in the numbers, but that’s just a guess.
[i]”That comes to 11.4 calls per day, or 3.79 per station.”[/i]
At that call volume (3 to 4 calls per 24 hours), plus the time needed to train and maintain their equipment, it does suggest to me that on a normal day, they should have no trouble getting plenty of sleep and having plenty of time for 3-4 good meals, including cooking time and dishwashing, etc. My suggestion is the ff’s go “off the clock” for the time they are eating and shopping (4 hours per day) and for half the time they are sleeping (4 more hours).
That would save taxpayers a lot of cash. And it would still renumerate them for 16 hours, even if they only answer 3-4 calls. Since they make 1/3rd more than police officers do, this would have the added benefit of pay equity for public safety officers across the board.
At the same time, if they have a day with a major structure fire and no time to really relax, then they could stay on the clock on those days.