By Kristin Bender
Inside Bay Area
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All Rights Reserved
BERKELEY, Calif. — The city has begun temporarily closing fire stations in a cost-saving move, though firefighters say that’s risky during the winter, when heaters and holiday lights are in full use.
City leaders initiated the rotating closures of fire stations last week as a result of their biannual budget review. The alternative, they said, would be to permanently close one of Berkeley’s seven fire stations.
The temporary closures are triggered when too many firefighters take vacation or sick leave or cannot work because of jury duty, family leave or injuries.
The city in recent years has spent an estimated $2 million annually on firefighters’ overtime, and is now trying to rein in the overtime to roughly $1 million, said City Councilmember Gordon Wozniak.
Besides being costly, overtime can be hard on morale, he said. “If (fire crews) are forced to do mandatory overtime and they are doing it a high percentage of the time, that’s not necessarily good, either. It interferes with their family life and a lot of other things.”
Four of the city’s seven fire stations have only one piece of apparatus -- a fire engine. When any of those four single-engine stations is closed, it is left unstaffed for up to 24 hours, said firefighter David Sprague.
“It’s not the high wildland (fire) season, but it’s the season when people start using their heaters (after being off for the year) and there are Christmas trees with lights on them,” Sprague said.
Two years ago, stations in Berkeley were temporarily closed on a rotating basis due to budget shortfalls. In Oakland, rotating closures ended last year when voters passed a property tax increase that sets aside $4 million annually to fund fire stations.
The new $7.3 million Berkeley hills fire station at Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Shasta Road, completed earlier this year, is slated to be closed several days in January.
Brian Harryman, president of the firefighters’ union, said, “Closing fire stations to balance thebudget, especially when department staffing is already at a level that should be considered the bare minimum, jeopardizes the safety of our members and the citizens who may be in need of fire and medical emergency response.”
Firefighters also worry that being short on staff during an earthquake, major hills fire or flooding could be catastrophic.
A few months ago, the city distributed 23 earthquake packages to neighborhood associations containing medical kits, a 5,000-watt generator, 500-watt utility light, hammers, two-way radios and other supplies. The supply kits were purchased with $80,000 in city money allocated to disaster preparedness by the council within the last year.
“In a large disaster, those groups are going to be great and help sustain the neighborhoods, but the people who are going to be coordinating those groups are the firefighters,” firefighter Sprague said.
Wozniak said he and Councilmembers Betty Olds and Kriss Worthington are trying to secure additional funding. “I suspect that we should be able to get (enough) votes for more funding,” he said.
Berkeley firefighters will be protesting the closures in front of each closed station between 8:30 and 10 a.m. daily and distributing fliers asking residents to write letters to the mayor and city council.