Yesterday the Sacramento City Council voted to try and find additional funds to prevent closing a second fire engine in the Sacramento Fire Department. The City Council, Mayor, and the City Manager are all working very hard to try and avoid this additional engine closure. The task they have is very difficult.

I have been bombarded with questions and comments pertaining to our Fire Department. People ask me on the street, readers comment in newspapers, and I receive telephone calls. Most of the people I speak with appreciate the job that your Sacramento Firefighters do, but many do not understand how or why we operate the way we do. The Fire Service, including your Sacramento Fire Department, historically has not done a very good job of informing the public about our jobs and what we do. I will try and change that! Here are some of the questions and comments that I get.

“Why do you send the big fire engine to a medical aid call?” Our Fire Engine and Truck Companies are all staffed with EMT’s and Paramedics. All of our personnel are also Firefighters! Our Fire Stations are geographically placed throughout the City and this equipment can usually get to the emergency much faster than our ambulances can. Because of the serious threat of fire and rescue emergencies, we have more fire engines and truck companies than we have ambulances.

If your heart stops, you will be dead in about 4 minutes. All of our Engines and Trucks carry Heart Defibrillators and Advanced Life Support gear and both Paramedics and EMT’s are trained to use this life saving equipment. During a call where a person’s heart has stopped and we are administering CPR, manpower is extremely important. One Firefighter has to do the chest compressions, one has to maintain the victims airway, another has to administer the advanced life support drugs, one has to get the ambulance and its equipment ready for transport, the Captain usually has to do the documenting and taking care of the victims family and friends. The patient has to be “packaged” and loaded onto the gurney and sometimes carried down many flights of stairs to the waiting ambulance.

To do this and many other medical aid calls is very labor intensive. And yes, this is a very typical call for us, one that we respond to many times on any given day.

“I was in a fender bender and 6 Firefighters showed up, and I wasn’t even hurt!” Car accidents can be very serious. We always respond at least one Fire Engine and one Ambulance to vehicle accidents.

Victims can be trapped; the car can be on fire. Removing victims from mangled cars takes a lot of personnel. There is broken glass, jagged metal, leaking fuel and the possibility of fire. We also need to make the accident scene as safe as possible for both the victims and the Firefighters. The “big Fire Truck or Engine” can block traffic and prevent others from running into to us!

If it is only a fender bender and no one is hurt, what we typically do is release the ambulance, so it can respond to other calls and we will stand by and wait for law enforcement. If another call comes in, we can always leave the scene and respond to the next emergency.

The main thing to remember is that usually in any emergency our Dispatchers receive many 911 calls. Until we actually arrive and see what we have, we do not know the true extent of the emergency. On many emergencies that we get called for, we immediately release equipment and make them available for other calls, if the emergency doesn’t require the dispatched fire equipment.

“How come some local Fire Agencies have only three Firefighters on their Fire Engines and you guys have four?” The Sacramento Fire Department operates with four Firefighters on every Engine and Truck Company. There are many reasons for this. There was a time that we operated with five Firefighters on all equipment.

The NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) is the organization in this country that sets standards for the fire service. The NFPA is not a labor or management organization. It is made up of people from many different backgrounds, people who have an interest in fire safety and prevention. Building Industry officials, Government officials, Firefighters, Fire Equipment Manufacturers and many more. The NFPA has set many standards and one of them states that Fire Engine and Truck Companies, to do their job properly and safely, should have as a minimum, four Firefighters assigned to them at all times. The standard even states that some companies should have five personnel assigned!

The Sacramento Fire Department has a much more diverse geographical area than the surrounding fire agencies do. In Sacramento we have many older buildings, high rise buildings, multiple story offices and apartments. Our life safety targets are high within the City limits. We also have the typical suburbs and even wildland areas.

With four persons on all of our apparatus we have the ability to quickly attack the fire and rescue any trapped occupants. Three personnel would only slow us down and hamper our ability to keep the fire small, and rescue trapped victims. A good example of this was the recent fire on H Street. It is my opinion that if we would have operated with three person companies, we would have probably lost that entire building and possibly the buildings next door!

“Why do you work 24 hours and fully staff your fire stations at night time?” Some people think that we only sleep at night and never respond to calls. After being on the job going on 29 years, I wish that this was true! It is very rare for any of our Firefighters to sleep all night. We get many calls after hours, and most of our more devastating and fatal fires happen late at night and early in the morning. Sleep is a luxury our Firefighters usually only get at home!

“Recently the Fire Inspectors showed up at my place of business to inspect my fire extinguishers, and these inspectors came in a big fire truck!” The Sacramento Fire Department has a Fire Prevention Bureau. The Fire Prevention Officers have a wide range of responsibilities, including building and business inspections, code enforcement, plan checks, and much more. However they do not ride in Fire Engines. They use staff cars.

What this person saw was their local Firefighters doing their “Monthly Business Inspections”. Every fire station is assigned to do monthly business inspections. This is when your Firefighters will come to your business, and look for any possible fire or safety problems. The Firefighters have the ability to write “correction notices”. If the problem is severe, they can refer to Fire Prevention who can write “citations” and in extreme cases even close down the business, until the problem is corrected.

As an Engine Captain, I would say that the main purpose for having me and my crew out doing business inspections is so that we can become familiar with your building and business. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have been at a fire or some other type of emergency, that it has helped me in knowing the layout of the building, where the fire hydrants and fire sprinkler connections are, where the best access points are, where some hazardous materials are stored. The list goes on and on. It pays for us to know your building inside and out!

“There aren’t that many fires in Sacramento, so what do you guys do all day?” Unfortunately in Sacramento we do have many fires. On any typical day we have at least one “working structure fire”. We have many more car fires, garbage and trash fires, brush fires, etc. We are also one of the Nations first Fire Departments that have trained Haz Mat Personnel. We run many medical aid calls and other calls for service.

Your emergency becomes our emergency and we do our best and are always ready to assist you! We also maintain our apparatus and equipment. You will not see any dirty, rusty, or poorly maintained fire equipment on any of our apparatus. We believe that this equipment can save our lives and lives of others, and unless they are in good working condition, we will not be able to depend on it in an emergency. We take great pride in our gear and equipment.

We also take pride in the training that we do. We train each and every day in some way. Without the training we do, we cannot be ready for the emergency when it hits!

And yes we do cook and eat, doesn’t everybody? Some of our Fire Houses have four persons and some have as many as eleven. Preparing for these meals is a job in itself, but like anything else that we may be doing, and you can use your imagination, when the bell hits, we stop what we are doing and we are out of the house in about one minute!

“And why do you still get cats out of trees?” We still respond to “cat in the tree” calls as well as other types of non-emergencies, because the public has grown to expect us to. Even though I have never seen a cat skeleton in a tree, we typically try and help the citizen get their cat down! Even though this is not a true emergency, we all carry radios and if another emergency is dispatched, we respond and we’ll come back to the cat call at a later time.

I really appreciate the opportunity I have to do this at Sacramento Press. To be able to respond in a letter to the editor in other newspapers, is usually difficult and most times it gets edited. I also encourage anyone who has more questions or comments to please respond to this and I’ll try and give you an answer or response. If you rather, you can also email me at jdoucette@sfd.cityofsacramento.org

Thank you for interest and always know that your Sacramento Firefighters take our business serious and although we hope that we never have to serve you, rest assured that we are there for you when you call!