By Rich Marinucci
Every fire department is capable of providing some level of service to the community based upon the resources that they are given. These would include personnel, apparatus and equipment, and training. As one would expect, there’s great variation and levels of capability.
The one area that contributes to this most is staffing. If there are not enough firefighters to do the job, the level of service suffers. I have had discussions with firefighters regarding this. In almost all cases, their organization does a great job, and they can cite incidents where the desired outcome was met.
This always triggers a few questions from me. If you can handle these calls satisfactorily, why should the community invest any more resources to hire people? Have you ever had any calls where your staffing affected the outcome? It seems that folks only remember the good outcomes and choose to defer discussion on times when things didn’t durn out so well.
I am not being critical or trying to be argumentative, but if these organizations can do it as well as those that are better staffed, what’s the point of trying to get more folks? The reality is that staffing makes a difference, and, regardless of the couple times that “a lot of fire was put out,” departments need to press for adequate staffing. I guess it would be like me saying that since I once had a hole-in-one while golfing that I am ready for the PGA Tour!
On a related subject, here’s a question—what is more important: staffing or response time? My answer is both, but sometimes you can’t have both. So, should you put two people in two stations to shorten response time, or put four people in one station? Now, some of you are questioning if this is really happening. I was recently at a department that had eight, yes eight, firefighters on staff for three stations. Their usual staffing model is to put one firefighter in two separate stations. The reasoning is that they can get to calls faster. I then ask what they can do with just one person?
I also express concern for safety when working by oneself. What happens if they slip in the station while all alone? What happens if they are alone on a call for a few minutes and something goes wrong? This situation may be a little extreme, but you can take the discussion further to consider staffing issues vs. response.
In my last column, I asked about the future fallout of reduced fire prevention programs, mostly as it related to pandemic shutdowns of activities. After I wrote that, there was a story in Michigan that civilian fire deaths rose 144% in the year 2021. Coincidence? Have there been other states seeing similar increases? Those that think fire prevention works, and that includes me, should not be surprised. Let’s hope programs can be restored and the trend reversed.
Here’s an interesting take on mutual aid or in this case an attempt at “moochual” aid. I was talking to a fire chief; his mutual aid association was reviewing its by-laws. There is a section that says a member community is to have representation at the monthly meetings. If a community fails to participate a specific amount, the mutual aid association can add fees to their membership to continue participation. The concept is to give chiefs and communities a mandate for participation, so everyone contributes. It also offers support for fire chiefs to participate in the event they have a boss who wants to control their schedule and time.
Without a doubt, there were fire chiefs that wanted to remove that language. That is where the “mooching” comes in. Why contribute if others will carry your mail. Fortunately, reasonable heads prevailed, and a change was not made. In a similar matter, I recall a chief stating that he was not going to participate because he couldn’t affo