CARMEL PROFESSIONAL FIREFIGHTERS, INTERNATIONAL ASSOC. OF FIREFIGHTERS LOCAL #4579 Educating the Community on the Benefits of Combined Fire Protection

ABSTRACT: CARMEL PROFESSIONAL FIREFIGHTERS, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIREFIGHTERS, LOCAL #4579 “Educating the Community on the Benefits of Combined Fire Protection” is reproduced. While Mayor Sue McCloud and Council Members Karen Sharp and Ken Talmage have stated that the Carmel Fire Department “works as is and needs no changes” and Mayor McCloud has stated that “we are staffed the way we should be,” the Carmel Firefighters believe that consolidation is the only viable option in the best interest of the citizens as far as “life safety, protection of property, and level of service.”

The Conclusion states, as follows:
“Unfortunately, at this point the City of Carmel has stepped back from full support of the combined fire department concept and is now looking at other options. These options are all cost prohibitive and result in a lower level of service. Carmel says it still sees a combined fire department as an option (and the city administrator says he personally supports it), but for some reason, which the fire chiefs and city administrators from Monterey and Pacific Grove cannot understand, the City still wants to consider other options.”

“It is our fear the other cities will, at some point, cancel the current contract (which is unsustainable in the long term) and Carmel will be forced into having a fire department which will not be capable of providing the levels of service it is currently receiving. Plus, it will cost more.”

A COMMENT is made with regard to supporting our Carmel Professional Firefighters by writing letters, sending emails, phoning City Hall, speaking at upcoming City Council meetings and sumitting letters to the editors. Contacts and contact information is complied.

CARMEL PROFESSIONAL FIREFIGHTERS
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIREFIGHTERS

LOCAL #4579

Educating the Community on the Benefits of Combined Fire Protection

Defining the Issue:

The Carmel Fire Department is challenged with maintaining proper staffing levels of chief officers, clerical staff, and fulltime line personnel and volunteers who are needed to provide the best service to its citizens. The Department is currently in the process of attempting to combine fire service with the departments from Monterey and Pacific Grove. Many citizens need to know that the motivation for this proposal is based upon providing the best possible service to the community.

History:

Thirty to forty years ago if a citizen called the Carmel Fire Department to report an emergency, a fire department composed of nearly all volunteers would respond to the aid of the caller or person in distress, and in adequate numbers. In these times volunteers applied to and joined their fire departments, and were trained according to each individual department’s set of operational procedures and standards. Training was usually done once a week in the evening, for around two to three hours. When called to emergencies, the firefighters would respond from home or work, at any time of the day or night, to the aid of their citizens.

Current Trends:

The demands on today’s volunteer firefighter are overwhelming. A volunteer firefighter is now required by law to maintain the same level of training and readiness as a career firefighter. Because of these demands it is easy to see why the volunteer ranks have diminished so dramatically, especially in this area when the economic factor is added to the equation. The days of volunteers responding anytime from home and/or work are now unheard of due to the financial impact and time demands in today’s world. There is just no room in people’s lives for such a commitment to a volunteer organization.

Today’s “volunteer” firefighter, for the most part, is the fire academy graduate who joins a volunteer or, what is now referred to as a “paid call” fire department to gain experience until her or she finds a full time position in another department.

Due to the various dynamics just discussed, fire departments have had to enhance their staffing by hiring more fulltime personnel. However, the many small fire departments in this area are mostly understaffed and lacking all of the necessary equipment it takes to provide the best level of service to their customers.

Relatively recent standards by the government state emergency responders are required to respond within a minimum amount of time and with a minimum amount of staffing (NFPA Standard 1710). Combining staffing and resources from several independent fire departments into one consolidated department will deliver the “right amount of people in the right amount of time” in time critical emergencies. By doing so, no only are the citizens receiving the level of service they deserve and are entitled to, the emergency responders are able to perform their duties more efficiently and, most importantly, safer.

Causes of the Current Issues:

The causes of the staffing and response challenges for Carmel Fire Department are a diminished volunteer base and government standards NFPA 1710 which dictate staffing and response. Carmel Fire Department is continuing to operate at less than minimum staffing according to NFPA 1710. The volunteer firefighters, which used to augment staffing to reasonable levels, are not here anymore.

Desired Situation:

The goal of the Carmel Fire Department regarding staffing and response is to develop a system, which is both efficient and cost effective. Solutions to help achieve this goal are found in the Citygate Associates Fire Department Feasibility Analysis for the cities of Monterey, Pacific Grove and Carmel, which discusses staffing issues. The best solutions to the issue of staffing and response, for Carmel, are for the City to adopt the findings of the Citygate study, and to show the citizens the benefits they will receive as a result.

Discussion:

The Citygate study states that under today’s NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) regulations a fire department, with from one to five stations, requires a command staff of seven chief officers. These chief officers include one fire chief, one assistant chief, three shift supervising chiefs, a training officer and a fire marshal. In addition, this command staff heeds to be supported by clerical staff and inspectors. In a combined fire department as proposed by Monterey, Pacific Grove and Carmel, the costs of supporting the command staff would be shared between the three cities. If the city of Carmel were to remain independent it would still need to provide the same number of chief officers in its command staff, plus support. This system would be ineffective in terms of cost, so the solution in terms of command staffing is to combine resources. As the feasibility analysis points out the combined, or merged, headquarters, which includes chief officers and support staff, will save the system around $1.3 million compared to the staffing levels needed if each agency operates as a separate fire department.

In terms of line personnel and emergency response, NFPA 1710 suggests a four-minute response time for initial fire and ambulance response, and a maximum of eight minutes for subsequent responding units. Combining the three departments into one would accomplish this. NFPA 1710 also suggests minimum staffing to emergencies, which will take into account rapid mitigation of the incident. For example, a single room and contents fire suggests a minimum of 14 to 15 firefighters and emergency responders. This amount of staffing is designed to extinguish the fire, rescue citizens from the burning structure, treat the medical needs of the citizens, have back-up crews available and have separate standby crews in state of readiness to initiate firefighter rescue efforts if needed. This staffing is also considered adequate to contain the fire to the area of origin, which results in rapid positive results. Larger incidents will require more resources.

A combined fire department would set unified standards for all responding units to provide equal levels of care. Currently, Carmel Fire Department’s staffing to a reported structure fire is one engine with two firefighters from Carmel station, and one ambulance with two firefighters on the Carmel Regional Fire Ambulance (CRFA) unit from Carmel station (if available). In addition, one engine with three to four firefighters from Cypress fire District will respond according to an automatic aid agreement. The staffing on scene will be from five to eight personnel (not counting chief officers and other overhead), or roughly one-half of the NFPA 1710 standards. By combining with Monterey and Pacific Grove, Carmel citizens will initially receive between 13 to 16 emergency responders consisting of fire and medical personnel. This is currently being done under the present system, but response times do not meet the standards and individual units are operating under different operations and procedures. And, if the current contract was to become void or Carmel chooses not to go through with the proposal to combine departments, these staffing levels would diminish along with the level of service.

For several years the fire department has tried to convey the importance of adequate staffing in order to provide the proper levels of service. Recently, as pointed out in the Citygate feasibility analysis, cities now face punitive repercussions for not properly staffing their fire departments. Simply put, “with adequate staffing the problems and dynamics of the fire and emergency scene are more in control,” especially in terms of safety. The consequences of having an inadequately staffed emergency response system include loss of life, property and a compromised tax base. It is only a matter of time before an incident takes place to cause these consequences to be realized die to improper fire department staffing and structure.

An alternative fire department set (as of January 28, 2008 by the city administrator) calls for Carmel Fire Department to remain independent, yet be staffed and equipped in accordance to NFPA 1710. This system would be cost prohibitive and result in overall lower levels of service to the citizens of the town. There is reason to believe the City may attempt to staff this setup below the standard in order to save money, which will compromise levels of service even further.

We are about to enter our third year under the leadership of Chief Andrew Miller and Assistant Chief David Brown from Pacific Grove Fire Department. They have earned the trust of the Carmel Fire Department staff and we have bought in to the concept of combing forces with Pacific Grove and Monterey.

With our small numbers we continue to fulfill our required training, operational and fire prevention assignments, but it is tough without help. A combined fire department will allow us to function more productively, providing us with back-up resources to assist and allow us to complete our assignments on time, and without burnout. We will be able to effectively train without interruption because there will be a crew available to respond to an emergence during a training exercise. The fact you will have a minimum immediate response of 15 firefighters with adequate resources to a structure fire in Carmel is worth more than you can ever imagine.

The labor groups representing the line personnel (firefighters) are strongly in favor of this proposal. Proactively, we have been doing things to promote unity and accountability, such as regular meetings to keep lines of communication open. Since Chiefs Miller and Brown took over almost three years ago, Carmel Fire personnel have been training to the same performance standards as the firefighters in Monterey and Pacific Grove. Again, the motivating factor is providing consistently better and safer service to the customer.

Conclusion:

Unfortunately, at this point the City of Carmel has stepped back from full support of the combined fire department concept and is now looking at other options. These options are all cost prohibitive and result in a lower level of service. Carmel says it still sees a combined fire department as an option (and the city administrator says he personally supports it), but for some reason, which the fire chiefs and city administrators from Monterey and Pacific Grove cannot understand, the City still wants to consider other options.

It is our fear the other cities will, at some point, cancel the current contract (which is unsustainable in the long term) and Carmel will be forced into having a fire department which will not be capable of providing the levels of service it is currently receiving. Plus, it will cost more.

Carmel Professional Firefighters
IAFF Local #4579
August Beacham, President
Matt Gardner, Vice-President
Mitchell Kastros, Secretary-Treasurer
Bruce Meyer, Trustee
Ian Watts, Trustee
Ken Hutchinson, Trustee

E-mail: CarmelFirefighters@yahoo.com

NOTE: NFPA 1710: Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments

Document Scope: 1.1.1 This standard contains minimum requirements relating to the organization and deployment of fire suppression operations, emergency medical operations, and special operations to the public by substantially all career fire departments. 1.1.2 The requirements address functions and objectives of fire department emergency service delivery, response capabilities, and resources. 1.1.3 This standard also contains minimum requirements for managing resources and systems, such as health and safety, incident management, training, communications, and pre-incident planning. 1.1.4 This standard addresses the strategic and system issues involving the organization, operation, and deployment of a fire department and does not address tactical operations at a specific emergency incident.

NFPA 1710: A Standard for Every Professional Fire Department

COMMENT:
• Support our Carmel Professional Firefighters by writing letters, sending emails, phoning City Hall and speaking at upcoming City Council meetings.
Contacts and contact information, as follows:
City Administrator
Rich Guillen
City of Carmel-by-the-Sea
P.O. Box CC
Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA 93921
Telephone: (831) 620-2000
Email: rguillen@ci.carmel.ca.us

City Council
Web site: www.ci.carmel.ca.us/
Regular meetings: The council meets at 4:30 p.m. on the first Tuesday of each month at City Hall on the east side of Monte Verde Street between Ocean and Seventh Avenues.

Sue McCloud, Mayor
Mailing address: PO Box M-1, Carmel, CA 93921
Phone: 624-7310
Fax: 626-1932
E-mail: cloud93921@aol.com

Ken Talmage
Mailing address: P.O. Box 1526, Carmel, CA 93921
Phone: 624-2462
Fax: 624-2452
E-mail: KKTalm@aol.com

Paula Hazdovac
Mailing address: P.O. Box 3164, Carmel, CA 93921
Phone: 620-2000 (Office) 625-2480 (Home)
Fax: 620-2004
E-mail: pjhaz@hotmail.com

Gerard A. Rose
Mailing address: P.O. Box 6516, Carmel, CA 93921
Phone: 625-1124 (Home) 624-3228 (Office)
Fax: 625-0145
E-mail: gfitzrose@aol.com

Karen Sharp
Mailing address: City Hall, P.O. Box CC, Carmel CA, 93921
Phone: 620-2000
Fax: 620-2004
E-mail: Karen@karensharpcarmel.com

Letters to the Editor:
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