It was just last month, on February 20, that we were talking on the Morning Lineup (HERE) about how some jurisdictions are abusing their mutual aid agreements by shutting down fire companies and reducing manpower, then relying on the mutual aid departments to pick up the slack on fire calls. One of the examples that we pointed out was the city of Milwaukee which is doing that very thing, bringing in neighboring departments to cover for the MFD’s failure to provide adequate resources of their own.
A more bizarre stunt came just a few days before that when the looney mayor of North Providence, Rhode Island, arbitrarily eliminated the position of Fire Chief. He has delegated the shift battalian chiefs to run the department on a rotation based on their shift work, and if a major fire occurs the city will rely on a fire chief from another jurisdiction coming on over to run the show. (see Firegeezer report HERE.) We predicted on the 20th, “…it shows how far some desparate politicians are willing to go in order to avoid taking proper fiscal responsibility for their own municipalities. This is just the sort of thing that can destroy the entire mutual aid concept, setting fire and rescue service back 50 years.”
Well, it took less than a month for our prediction to come true. On Monday, March 15, the Daytona Beach, Florida, Fire Chief Gary Hughes said that he is no longer going to send city fire units into Volusia County to respond to fires. Daytona Beach and Volusia County have/had a “nearest unit” mutual aid pact, but the city is accusing the county of doing just what we said before, closing stations and reducing the manpower on units below the recommended safe minimum. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported yesterday:
County officials have “taken their responses dangerously backwards,” the chief said.
Hughes said Daytona Beach firefighters are at risk when they don’t have enough help on a scene outside city limits, and Daytona Beach residents are in jeopardy when their firefighters are tied up on a call outside the city.
In a Feb. 23 letter to the county, Hughes said he’ll send his units “only after all available county resources have been exhausted and only if we have the resources to send.” He added in the letter that “… we will not commit resources to any incident if there are not sufficient personnel on scene to allow for firefighter safety and especially if there is not a formal command structure in place.”
It is obvious that the city is fed up with the growing burden on them to cover for the county’s lack of providing the basic fire protection themselves and shifting the expense to the city’s good will. Read the full article HERE to get the complete story and the county’s response.
WOFL-TV Ch. 35 Orlando interviewed Chief Hughes and filed this video report:
I will reiterate that this is not typical because most municipalities have been judicious and methodical in their compensating for the economic downturn. But there are some places like North Providence, Milwaukee, and Volusia County who think nothing of using their neighbors as stooges to make up for their own failings. Watch out for something like this happening around you and let us know if you see any other municipalities trying this stunt.
We’d better handle our own responsibility here and get this equipment checked out. I’m going to get the coffee started (and it won’t come out green).
