More Calls and Fewer Volunteers
MIRRORING A SITUATION THAT MANY COUNTIES are facing these days, Spotsylvania County, Virginia is finding it harder to keep volunteer fire stations staffed and in service. Spotsylvania is undergoing the classic transformation from a rural, farming area to a suburb populated with newcomers arriving from other, more populous areas. In this case, the greater Washington, D. C. metro area is creeping over the farmlands.
In recent years the Board of Supervisors have been hiring career firefighters to augment the dwindling and overworked volunteers, primarily covering the stations on weekdays. Four of the rural stations have no paid firefighters assigned to night and weekend duty with the expectation that those volunteers will cover. But it hasn't been happening lately and the County has been expending overtime funds to keep the stations open not just on weekdays, but on weekends and nights, too. But that all may be changing during the upcoming months.
The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star is reporting today:
The Fire and Emergency Medical Services Commission on Wednesday voted to recommend a plan that provides 24/7 coverage at stations in Belmont, Brokenburg, Partlow and Wilderness. It also funds additional employees at most of the county’s other stations.
Spotsylvania Fire Chief Chris Eudailey said every station should have enough personnel to staff both an ambulance and a fire engine 24/7. That isn’t the case on nights and weekends at the rural stations because of a shortage of volunteers.
The recommended plan would cost $4.2 million annually after being fully implemented. It calls for 56 new full-time employees over two years, including 18 for a new station off Benchmark Road scheduled to open next year. The Board of Supervisors, which has the final say, will receive a report on the plan at its March 27 meeting.
Commissioner Jason Irby said the county "experienced the failure" of that staffing arrangement this past weekend. A three-person crew at the Wilderness station couldn’t immediately respond to a nearby house fire last Saturday because they were at Mary Washington Hospital on a medical call. The Lake Wilderness home was a total loss, but no people were injured.
The thorough article in the Free Lance-Star includes the entire 5-phase plan that, if implemented, will be completed by the end of 2013. Read the entire article HERE.
Read previous Firegeezer articles on Spotsylvania County growing pains from Dec. 2008 HERE, July 2009 HERE, June 2011 HERE, and November 2011 HERE .
Spotsylvania Fire, Rescue and Emergency Management WEBSITE.
Spotsylvania Volunteer Fire Department WEBSITE.
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LAFD Woes Continue
1 commentIt's All Starting to Come Out Now
THE VIGOROUS CAMPAIGN FOR MAYOR of Los Angeles (California) is exposing more failures of the City Council and the Mayor. Among the agencies which are coming up short is the Fire Department. That fine agency has been undermined by the current mayor who has slashed the FD budget by 16% in recent years, instituted rotating station brown-outs, and eliminated units from one-fourth of the city's 106 fire stations. All this time the mayor and Fire Chief Brian Cummings have been saying that the department is doing okay despite the large cuts.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, left, and Fire Chief Brian Cummings
discuss response times and deployment at a March 13 news conference.
(Barbara Davidson, Los Angeles Times / March 13, 2012)
But one of their "proofs" of success, the average response times were found to be based on jiggered numbers and are really noticably slower than they had admitted to. (See the Firegeezer article from March 11, LAFD Admits Inflating Response Times Favorably HERE.) As more people from the political opposition and reporters from the local press start looking behind the facade, even more deception is being exposed. Yesterday (Saturday) a columnist for the Los Angeles Times unloaded on the mayor and fire chief for the deterioration of the FD since they have taken control. Some quotes from Stephen Lopez's detailed commentary indicate that all might not be well in the city:
Apparently the shell game has extended into the maintenance division. A combination of harder usage on the trucks coupled with a 30% reduction in the number of mechanics has left the fleet shaky and unreliable as more reserve apparatus are being used while normal repairs are backlogged as much as a month. Now the reserve fleet is failing from the excess work.
Read Steve Lopez's entire commentary HERE.
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The LA Times has followed up with a separate article about the falling-apart of the emergency dispatch center. They tell about a day recently where a woman had her hand mangled in a piece of machinery and had to wait 45 minutes before any help arrived because the dispatch system had just failed:
Firegeezer comments: I find it amazing that nobody in that huge dispatch center had the presence of mind to call the nearest station by land line and get a unit started right away. Don't you have to take a test or something in order to work there?
Read the detailed article on problems at the 9-1-1 center HERE.
Firegeezer adds further: Having observed the LA Times' past behavior which includes dubious reporting by partial disclosure of facts and events, I recommend that we pause and give the FD time to get back to work on Monday and see if they address these charges.
Hat tip to: Mike T.
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