Response to the Glendale
Fire Department’s Report to the City
Council During a Special
Study Session on
Week # 2,
This week will conclude our presentation on policies that are causing excessive emergency response delays. The fire department recently changed its policy that allowed firefighters to jog in remote and out of district locations that was proven to cause severe delays in response times. While that policy change will prevent delays that were often double the average, there are other elective activities that are causing a much larger number of delays.
These preventable delays occur when engine and truck companies take themselves out of service or drive out of their fire districts for extended periods of time to conduct activities that can be accomplished through other means.
These delays continue to be ignored because of tradition and have been established practice for many years. They fall under the Glendale Fire Department’s Risk Management assessment scheme as acceptable. If the fire department applied the principle of Geographic Integrity they would be forced to change these practices. We will show slides of the fire department’s own activity logs and recent photographs that depict various kinds of activities by first responders that close their neighborhood fire stations and leave their fire districts altogether. Without geographic integrity, the opposite, or geographic isolation becomes an accepted practice. Due to time constraints we will only be able to share a few activity logs that depict examples.
Slide 1 shows Truck Company 26 out of service at Broadway
and Isabel so that one or more firefighters can be given a physical exam as
part of the city’s Employee Health Services Program. When Truck Company 29
engages in this activity, all of north
Slides 2 and 3 show four-person engine-companies being taken out of service for hours to perform simple clerical duties of copying Daily Activity Logs.
Slide 4 depicts a “Christmas Family Detail” where the whole engine company was taken out of service. This kind of activity is permitted under the standard of Risk Management. It would not have been tolerated if the test of Geographic Integrity had been applied.
Slide 5 depicts another Christmas Family Detail. This time one firefighter is assigned for four hours, leaving the engine company in its station. You will note that the remaining three first responders handled three emergency medical calls in their district during that time. Had the entire engine company gone to the Christmas Family Detail as was saw in the prior slide, all of the medical calls would have required another, out of district, company response, causing delays measured by minutes, not seconds.
Slide 6 depicts the entire engine company 27 closing down and driving out of district so that one or more firefighters could be fitted for turnouts at Station 26.
Slide 7 is a good illustration where the right decision was made to keep first responders in district. Here one firefighter drives the station’s passenger vehicle to Fire Station 24 to get turnouts while the other three-member crew remains in their fire district ready to respond to emergencies.
Slide 8 depicts several noteworthy issues. The first is that the engine company was staffed with three for the entire shift. The second is the fourth firefighter is an elected officer of the union and he left the station to “visit” other stations on union business; he apparently never returned. It is important to note that this firefighter is the only certified paramedic on the crew and his position on the engine company is critical in the 88% of calls that are medical in nature. The third point of is that the company closed its station down to drive to another station for a turnout fitting.
Slide 9 shows an engine company closing its stations for
several hours so that the firefighters can drive to fire headquarters and
select their preferred city paid medical insurance policy, called “Open
Enrollment”. Because all
Slide 10 depicts an out of district response that occurs all too frequently. On Wednesday, February 27, 2008, fire captain and union president, Chris Stavros, took his entire engine company out of its fire district (27) and drove to City Hall, which is in fire district 26, so that he could address the Civil Service Commission. While in the city council chambers, a medical emergency was taking place in Captain Stavros’ fire district. Because engine 26 was out of its district, truck 26 was dispatched along with rescue ambulance 26.
Slide 11 is the dispatch log of the incident mentioned in slide 10. It shows that when Stavros finally got on the radio, he quickly canceled the truck company, notifying the dispatcher that he (Stavros) was closer to the call. That was proven not to be true. It took the rescue ambulance that rolled from Station 26, 3 minutes and 19 seconds to arrive on the call. Had Truck 26 not been canceled, it would have arrived at the same time as the rescue ambulance because it would have rolled in tandem with the ambulance. It took engine 26 an additional two full extra minutes because it was responding from city hall, which is out of its district. You will note that the dispatch log shows the incident is a heart attack. When Chief Howard was presenting his material on justifying staffing with four on engine companies, he said that it is critical on heart attack calls to have up to five firefighters attending to the victim. Here, the victim had to wait an additional two minutes before more than two firefighters were on scene. Truck 26 does not have a firefighter/paramedic on its crew but Engine 26 does. This can be critical in some medical response cases like heart attacks.
Slide 12 shows how creative scheduling can insure geographic integrity while allowing firefighters to attend appointments. This daily activity log shows where three of the four firefighters were able, at different times, to make appointments that required their presence. This allowed the engine company to remain in quarters.
Slides 13 through 15 show photos that were taken recently
and depict Engine 26 & Rescue Ambulance 26 taking a coffee break in
As was found in the flawed jogging policy, remedies to
these practices also exist. You can see by the slides that engine and truck
companies leave their fire districts so that one or two of the four-member crew
can attend a scheduled appointment. These types of activities occur every shift. Rather than take the
entire company out of its district or out of service, in violation of
geographic integrity, firefighters with appointments can drive the city-owned
vehicle that is assigned to each fire station, keeping their personal
appointments one at a time. By a slight policy change, emergency
responders will be in their fire stations far more often than under the current
policy, which permits and condones geographic isolation. This will save lives
and further reduce the number of ‘failed incidents’ in south
Prepared by:
Bruce Philpott
818.240.8949
Email: brcphilpott1@aol.com/