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Friday, February 10, 2012
Sacramento Fire Engine Closures
by Jim Doucette, published on January 24, 2009 at 2:11 PM
Storyline: Fire Safety
Community Tags
fire
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Someone asked me the other day about a sign outside of Sacramento Fire Department Station #2, located at 13th and I Streets. The sign announces, “Engine #2 is Closed Today”. This sign is one of many that appear on a rotating basis, every day at one Fire Station located somewhere in the City.
Earlier in 2008, because of budget cuts, the Sacramento Fire Department, along with every City Department had to reduce its budget. The Fire Department had to cut its budget by 4%. The majority of this was accomplished by “closing” one Fire Engine each day on a rotating basis. This savings is realized by not having to staff four persons each shift that may be on leave, I.E. sick leave, vacation, or injury leave. The four Firefighters, who would have worked the Engine closed for the day, are moved to another Fire Station where there is a vacancy. There is a very small additional savings in fuel and vehicle maintenance, but this is miniscule.
Not all fire stations are affected. The Engines that are closed are only the ones that work in a “double company” house. That means there is a Fire Engine and a Fire Truck stationed there. Both Fire Engines and Fire Trucks are staffed with EMT’s and most times Paramedics. Most of the emergencies we respond to are medical in nature, so these closures do not affect are ability to respond, but they do increase response times and they have and they can affect our ability to combat fires. And even though most of our emergencies are medical aids, the Sacramento Fire Department still responds to many fires. We are one of the Nation’s busiest Fire Departments in terms of call volume and how many actual fires we have!
So the fire station remains opened with the Truck Company, but the Engine that is stationed there will be closed for the two day shift. The next shift, another Engine somewhere else in the City will be closed for the two day shift.
The Administration of the Fire Department gave it a lot of thought and it was determined to only close Fire Engines, not Fire Trucks. The thought behind this is that the primary responsibility of a Fire Truck at the scene of the fire is to rescue trapped occupants. The primary responsibility of the Engine Company is to get water on the fire. Now in all honesty you have a hard time doing either without both Fire Engines and Fire Trucks and their personnel on scene. The decision to close only Engines was not an easy one, but it had to be made. The Fire Department is constantly evaluating this decision, and if need be, this could change in the future.
With the budget problems we currently are in and with no “light at the end of the tunnel”, we hope to prevent future company closures, but this cannot be guaranteed. The importance of having a fully staffed Fire Department couldn’t have been more evident, with the recent fire we had at 13th and H Street.
Below is a list of the current Fire Stations and their locations that continue to have a Fire Engine closed on a rotating basis every day:
Station #2 1231 I Street
Station #5 731 Broadway
Station #6 3301 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Station #7 6500 Wyndham Drive
Station #10 5642 66th Street
Station #16 7363 24th Street
Station #17 1311 Bell Avenue
Station #20 2512 Rio Linda Blvd.
Station #30 1901 Country Club Drive
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I can't give you exact figures right now, (I'll have to do a little research Monday and then I'll post them!), but roughly we run about 70% Medical, the rest fires and "other" types of calls. There are a variety of reasons, but in Sacramento we do have a large amount of fires. Structure, car, trash, vegetation, etc... We also have a pretty high death rate from structure fires, and I'll get that info Monday as well. Thanks for all of your comments, and as always, I'll do my best to get your answers to you anytime!
Times are tough all over. We need people to step it up, pitch in, and sacrifice...even firefighters.
Also here is a Bee article about Lincoln budget cuts including firefighters: http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/1543454.html
I'm not advocating or railing against that, just stating facts.
http://www.sacfire.org/indexSub.cfm?page=293657
Although fires still make up fewer than 10% of our calls, they do require a lot of resources. On a typical “bedroom” fire we have to send at least 20 Firefighters to the scene. And unfortunately we see about a half dozen fire deaths each year in our City. This is about double what it should be for a similar sized California City. Why our death rate is higher that it should be is a good question. But the one inexpensive tool that really does work and saves lives every day is the simple smoke detector. You would not believe the people that still do not have one in their home! In my 28 plus years as a Firefighter I have never seen one fire death where the victim had a working smoke detector in their home.
We also strive to get to every emergency in about 4 minutes. Although for a variety of reasons we do not always make the 4 minute goal, we still give it our best shot. Recently we changed our dispatch procedure to get us out of the Fire House quicker. It used to be that the dispatchers would get more information than they currently do before dispatching the closest and most appropriate Fire Company. Now they get the very basic information first, and then dispatch us, and then the dispatchers get additional information from the caller and relay it to us while we are responding. This is actually helping us get to the emergency scene about one minute quicker. More Fire Departments in the U.S. are starting to dispatch this way.
I also have a request in to our web site person to update the “Company Closure (Brown Out) Page”. I hope to have this updated A.S.A.P.