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Los Angeles Fire Departments Budget Cuts

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Category: Community News

Published on Tuesday, 06 October 2009 07:36

Written by David Sroaf

And How It Affects Your Safety

By David Sroaf

In these recessionary times, budgetary belt-tightening has forced some tough decisions on Mayor Villaraigosa and the City Council.   Among these has been a $56 million reduction in funding for the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) for Fiscal Year 2009-2010. Faced with these budget cuts, Fire Chief Douglas Barry developed what the Department calls a “Modified Coverage Plan” for its emergency responders. Implemented on August 5th, the plan shuts down 15 fire trucks and six ambulances per day throughout the city.  These “rotating brownouts” affect some, but not all, of the 106 neighborhood fire stations in Los Angeles, shaving $39 million from the Department’s annual operating costs without forcing a single station closure.

With smoke billowing from the hillsides ringing our city and summer fire season’s “red flag” days still breathing down our necks, it’s worth a moment to investigate how these resource closures may affect our public safety....

The LAFD employs 3856 uniformed firefighters and 353 support personnel. Of these, about 1100 uniformed firefighters (242 of whom are also paramedics) are always on duty to respond to emergency calls.  The Department’s jurisdiction is vast, covering some 471 square miles.  Working in three alternating shifts, the city’s firefighters made 750,000 responses last year alone.   With so many calls coming in, the Chief’s Modified Coverage Plan has excited some concern that taking the specified personnel and vehicles out of service, even if only temporarily, will expose city residents to potentially lethal increases in emergency response time.

The draft version of Chief Barry’s brownout plan included no input from the service union, United Firefighters of Los Angeles City (UFLAC). Because of the time-critical nature of firefighting and paramedics, UFLAC demonstrated against the cuts when the topic of truck company closures came before the City Council in May and again in August.  Over 500 rank-and-file firefighters marched on City Hall, with the local’s President Pat McOsker acknowledging the “need for shared sacrifice” but protesting against any staffing reductions “that will mean more people will suffer and die due to delayed responses.”  Since then orange signs have appeared near many city fire stations with messages including “YOU AND YOUR FAMILY ARE IN DANGER” and “THE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL ARE GAMBLING WITH YOUR LIVES.”

Mayor Villaraigosa derides UFLAC’s claims as scare tactics trotted out by the “irresponsible” leadership of the firefighters’ union. With tax revenues evaporating and firefighter pension costs skyrocketing, the City, which by law must operate with a balanced budget, had no choice but to implement short-lived resource closures and funding cuts. The
service reductions eliminate 87 of 1100 daily duty firefighters, vacant positions filled in recent years by off-duty employees working overtime.  The Mayor and Council members who voted in support of the cuts note that all FY 2008-2009 staffing positions had, in fact, been re-authorized in the new budget.  They wonder whether the union’s trumped up alarms about the “threat to public safety” aren’t really cynical attempts to gain public relations leverage in advance of upcoming labor negotiations. 

UFLAC President McOsker disagrees, arguing that what’s irresponsible is idling fire companies, paramedic resources, and ambulances.  McOsker believes plain and simple that the plan will cost lives, civilian and firefighter alike, a proposition the union finds intolerable.  Longer response times are only part of the story. 
Increased workload imposes additional hazards on the rank-and-file members of the department, while not staffing all available battalions precludes pre-deployments of truck companies to areas of increased fire danger because of the need to keep all available firefighters in their community stations.

Neighborhood Fire Station 68, located at 5023 Washington Blvd. (just west of La Brea), and Neighborhood Fire Station 26 at 2009 S. Western Ave., just north of the I-10  serve the Mid-City and West Adams communities, respectively, with the west-east dividing line at Crenshaw Blvd. Every Los Angeles City Fire Station has three duty platoons, A, B, and C, working in alternating 24-hour shifts.   Twenty-seven firefighters are assigned to Station 68; each nine-person shift includes one station Captain, an EMS Captain, one Engineer, four Firefighters, and two Firefighter/Paramedics. Because Station 68 is a single engine station (meaning it has no hook-and-ladder) its one and only fire truck cannot be removed from service, so it has been unaffected by the “rolling brownouts.”  

Fire Station 26, in contrast, has both a hook-and-ladder and a pump truck as well as two rescue ambulances.  Fully staffing the station requires 14 personnel, including the six firefighters who compose the hook-and-ladder light force.   The rolling brownouts hit Station 26 nine times in August, which meant on those days the hook-and-ladder force was idled and unavailable to respond to emergencies; an additional nine brownouts kept the hook-and-ladder in the garage the first twelve days in September.

Despite the massive brush fires that erupted on the city’s margins in recent weeks, good fortune has smiled on the Mid-City and West Adams regions.  Thus far, at least, the absence of the light force has not resulted in delayed response times with tragic results.  It remains to be seen whether we will remain so lucky in the months to come.

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