Dear Nozzlehead,
I belong to a combination fire department that is relatively busy. We are surrounded by similar departments, and with the exception of one we all play well in the “sandbox” together. The issue is that that community is the one that calls us for mutual aid more than the others. They have career members but due to budget cuts and tax vote failures they don’t have the staffing needed to help their own community-so they call us all the time.
Essentially, because their taxpayers and elected officials decided to cut the fire department, budget, and personnel, other departments now have to pull the load to keep up.
I welcome your thoughts.
– Exhausted in the Mid-East
Dear No Doze,
Based on where your e-mail came from, you are in a state that borders the mid-Atlantic region. Good thing I saw that because otherwise I would be pressured to solve the issues in the Middle East … which I have done in previous columns. Unfortunately they just won’t listen. I have written about mutual aid vs. moochual aid in the past, and this is a great opportunity to discuss it again.
Simply put, fire and rescue are the responsibility of the public. What!?!!
Calm down and listen.
If enough of the public wants adequate fire services, they will get adequate fire services. The elected officials will do what’s needed, but the public needs to speak up and be willing to pay the piper. Even in volunteer fire departments, this stuff costs money. With that in mind, we have a responsibility to fairly educate the public before there is a crisis so they understand what they will get for the money they are willing to pay. We can’t stay hidden within the firehouse bay doors and expect the public, city hall, or anyone else to educate the public-we need to help them understand what is needed, why, and the related costs.
At this point, there are many factors that can screw that all up: bad public impression, poor service, poor conduct, fiscal waste, and related stuff that tend to get taxpayers’ attention.
So if the town tax fails and it’s cut time, but we as firefighters don’t like that and we know it can be dangerous for the public, and us, it becomes a tough situation because we as firefighters understand the job must still get done. Sorta. Remember, the public just said that they don’t want the proposed service. So now what do we do?
The best response is to never let that happen by making sure the public fully understands the “whys” and “hows” without wasting their funds or giving them a poor perception of their fire department. But we didn’t do that, and we now have cuts.
“I have an idea: Let’s call our neighboring departments to fill in the gaps from what the public decided to cut.” And there we have the issue.
Mutual aid means just that-mutual; it means that I have something to offer you, and you us. Kinda like a marriage, we try to keep things balanced. (As Mrs. Nozzlehead has reminded me, this isn’t all about you.)
Anyway, my point is that just because your town cuts the budget doesn’t mean that that cut then gets filled by a neighboring fire department. What it does mean is that your community will get what they can afford, and what they voted for-at least initially. In other words, if your resources are depleted, call for mutual aid. Or if you arrive and help is needed, call for mutual aid. But if your community cuts the budget and that cut will result in delays or fewer tasks being performed initially then that’s what is going to happen. I know it sounds horrible, but that’s exactly what happens. This isn’t like cutting lawn mowing at the local park.
Not far from me, the defeat of a township’s fire levy has now drastically affected service not only in the township but also to the southwestern neighborhoods of a large city that the town borders. That big city depends on townships responding on auto-aid (with the closest units going) to help cover its farther reaches, and this one specific township helps the city a lot.
Of the almost 12,000 engine and medic runs that the township’s two fire stations made last year, about 11,000 were into that big city. 11,000! On the other hand, last year that big city sent an engine into the township 172 times and an EMS unit 1,042 times. A little off balance … a little.
As I’ve discussed here before, a huge factor is that we, as firefighters, care. Cut garbage collection? Less garbage gets picked up. Cut cops? Fewer cops on patrol. Cut parks and rec workers? Soccer gets played in higher grass. Cut us? We tend to always try to go above and beyond. Unfortunately, our caring doesn’t fix the problem and forces us to do what may often be measured as the impossible.
In this scenario, eventually bad stuff will happen to those who call 911 and to firefighters who answer the call.
The solution comes before it’s identified as a problem. We must get in front of the issue well before the voting starts. We have to explain in a calm, cool, professional manner the facts about fire, time, response, and staffing. And do it regularly in meetings, at service clubs, in the papers-all the time. Remind the public about what they can expect from their fire department when they call us for help, if they regularly pay taxes.
For example, how quickly do they expect to have 20 firefighters on the scene? What scene? What neighborhood? What fire? What rescue? What water supply? It’s all easily predictable and plannable before the fire or EMS run. And naturally it comes down to cost:
- 20 firefighters on the scene 90% of the time within six minutes costs $____
- 10 firefighters on the scene 70% of the time within eight minutes costs $____
- Five firefighters on the scene 50% of the time within 10 minutes costs $____
None of this, of course, includes the human factor of costs in relationship to lives saved on fire or EMS runs-and lives lost.
Automatic mutual aid or mutual aid is phenomenal and has proven to save civilian and firefighter lives. But it must be carefully planned and must be mutual; you must make sure that your community can provide the other community with similar help when they call for it. It needs to be fair to us and the taxpayers funding it. Each department has a responsibility to have a common denominator of basic service, and then we can talk about auto or mutual aid.
These days, understaffed, underfunded communities are using moochual aid to compensate for their shortcomings. And now more and more communities are starting to rethink how un-mutual some so-called mutual aid is.
Next month I am going to respond to a question about VAP. Huh!? What? WHAT IS VAP!? Calm down. We’ll fill ya in on how can VAP help any fire department identify where we may be in trouble … deep trouble … in our own fire departments. Scary stuff.
Sidebar – Got a fire service question or complaint?
Let Nozzlehead hear all about it.
He’ll answer you with 2,000 psi of free-flowing opinion.
Send your letters to: Nozzlehead, c/o FireRescue
PennWell Corp.
21-00 Route 208 South
Fair Lawn, NJ 07410
Attn: Diane Rothschild
(dianer@pennwell.com)
