Fire Department Merger, Fire Staffing and the Budget

It would be perhaps fitting if the Davis firefighters, for the last several years the symbol of failed fiscal restraint in the City of Davis and really across the state and the nation, represented the undoing of Davis’ budget hopes.

The ultimate goal was to fully merge the operations of the two departments.  However, that plan has produced some snags.  For one thing, City of Davis firefighters make substantially more than their UC Davis counterparts.

For another, the City of Davis operates with four-man fire engine units, while UC Davis, like 85% of the rest of the state, relies on three-person units.

Of the two sticking points, the salary issue appears to be more insurmountable, with UC Davis said to be unwilling to increase the salaries of their firefighters and the City of Davis unable to reduce the salaries of theirs.

Also holding up the process is the staffing issue.  The City of Davis is waiting on a staffing report that apparently is not coming any time soon, that could recommend a reduction from four-person engines to three-person engines.

Such a plan would appear to have opposition, not just from the firefighters union, but from the acting fire chief.

Back in July, in an interview the Vanguard, Chief Bill Weisgerber, who has been acting as chief since Rose Conroy stepped down in early 2010, does not believe that the reduction is a wise plan of action.

“The idea of going from 4-person to 3-person engine companies is seemingly a ‘cost-savings’ strategy,” he writes.  “However, the issue is more accurately one of a how many firefighters are needed to respond in time for both the rapid treatment of life-threatening medical emergencies (before permanent or fatal harm occurs) and the control and extinguishment of fires (at the earliest stages, before small fires become large).”

The bigger issue for the chief appears to be that the city, with UC Davis’ help, needs a firefighting force of 15 plus a command officer in order to perform all the tasks vital in reducing the effects of fire on a structure and to the occupants.

“Multiple units are needed to deliver enough firefighters to serious emergencies, within a reasonable period of time, in order to effectively perform synchronized tasks for the necessary results,” he said.

Complicating the problem is a high occurrence of simultaneous fire-related incidents, according to the chief, “averaging an unusually high frequency of approximately 20% of the time.”

From a statistical standpoint, that would appear to be an anomaly, however.

Bruce Philpott served as police chief of the Pasadena until his retirement in 1991.  A resident of the city of Glendale, he has become a leading and vocal critic of their fire department policies.

Mr. Philpott argues that, given the fact that for most emergency calls that fire departments respond to, up to 90% are single-person medical incidents, and that with three people on an engine and two on an ambulance, the medical victim would have five trained personnel working on him or her.

“The addition of a fourth firefighter on the engine doesn’t add much benefit on the vast majority of these calls,” he said.

Fire departments that utilize four-person engine companies, such as Davis, follow the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards.

Mr. Philpott points out that the NFPA is composed of “fire managers and union members, private insurers and building materials manufacturers.”  The NFPA has developed standards for interior structural firefighting, and among those is “four firefighters are required to make up the entry team to extinguish a structural fire. Two go into the building with the attack hose and two remain outside to act as a rapid intervention team to rescue the two firefighters inside if needed.”

This assignment, he argues, is intended to reduce injuries and deaths.  Cal OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) also has adopted the four-person entry team, but unlike the NFPA, Cal OSHA is law.

While fire departments and unions cite the NFPA standard as a reason to have four-person fire engines, Mr. Philcott argues, “When greater scrutiny to the NFPA is applied, it becomes clear that a four-person entry team cannot be assembled from the first arriving engine company staffed with four firefighters.”

Instead, he writes, “Arriving at a working structure fire, there is important preparatory work and fixed functions that remove several firefighters on the first arriving engine to perform the entry team functions.”

“The NFPA standards do not permit a four-person engine company to independently engage in interior structural firefighting, some fire departments hang on to the belief that they can,” he added.”

He argues that both the captain, as the incident commander, and the engineer assigned to controlling the pumps cannot reasonably be part of the four-man team.

If that is the case, then two teams have to arrive in order to enter a building, anyway.  A six-person team comprised of two engine companies would be as prepared as any to enter a building, on the rare times it is required in Davis.

Mr. Philcott, citing a Cal OSHA warning to Glendale for “its failure to follow required procedures of utilizing a four-person entry team when attacking an interior structure fire,” argues that “Fire departments that continue to choose the four-person staffing model need to recognize the risk exposure to their firefighters when independently attacking a working structure fire.”

He adds, “What is key to policy makers is that the four-person staffing model is solely justified by this one kind of fire call, a working structure fire, and they are statistically rare. Fire departments that are adopting the three-person staffing model recognize the inherent risk of attacking a working structure fire with only four firefighters on the fire ground.”

The original CityGate report suggested that, by including UC Davis in their model, all of the Davis City Proper has multiple station coverage within an eight-minute travel time, while 90 percent of the city has three-station coverage in that time, and half the city is covered by all four stations.

The concern that CityGate had was the “rising problem of simultaneous incidents.”

They argue that this is a significant issue for Davis.  In 2008, there were 4,269 total incidents, or 11.6/day.  The frequency of simultaneous incidents climbed to 21% in 2008.

The question we keep having to ask is why this is occurring.

Moreover, CityGate argued that the issue was not 3 versus 4, but the problem that 12 firefighters on duty is light for a community of Davis’ size and risks.

However, it is not clear what a four-person fire engine buys the city over a three-person fire engine.  Simultaneous fire events would still be a problem, with four- or three-person teams.  It is also not clear (A) why the city would have so many more simultaneous events when the population is not growing and the buildings are relatively new, and (B) why the city would have more simultaneous event than other cities.  Is this just statistical noise, or is something more going on?

But going to a three-person engine would save the city at least $1.5 million on an annual basis, and move the city one step closer to the ability to fully merge with UC Davis.

The other point that is not made, but should be, is that if the city firefighters were making what the UC Davis firefighters were making, the city might be better able to afford keeping the staff at current levels.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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