By Jodi Andes
The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
Copyright 2007 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Firefighters scrambled inside with a hose last fall as flames consumed the Franklinton home on Wisconsin Avenue. Bystanders screamed that a woman and her three children were trapped inside.
But in a job where seconds can separate life from death, the fire crew had to wait 1 1/2 minutes for the water to start flowing.
A Columbus Fire Division engine had malfunctioned -- again.
Firefighter Keith Graney, who suffered second- and third-degree burns, jumped from a second-story window. Without water, it was his only option as the room he was searching burst into flames.
Fire and police officials said this is what happens when the city spends too much money repairing old and inferior equipment instead of buying new.
Last month, firefighters used a funnel, hose and coffee can to recycle leaking hydraulic fluid so a ladder truck could be kept in service. After a week, the truck, which was a replacement for a front-line truck, was replaced with another replacement vehicle.
City officials, however, say they’re doing the best they can with limited finances.
“We were in the largest, deepest recession since the Depression,” Mayor Michael B. Coleman said Friday. “We didn’t do things like lay off. But we did have to extend the life of our vehicles.”
He said his staff is working on a plan to replace old vehicles.
Fire and police officials acknowledge that money has been tight but note the city bought some new vehicles last year -- 41 garbage trucks, compared with four fire vehicles.
“Refuse was about to collapse,” Coleman said. “They were in critical need last year.”
On average, Columbus police cruisers have more than twice the mileage of city garbage trucks. Mileage on fire medic units averages three times that of garbage trucks. On March 7, an EMS coordinator was driving to a fire station to get a new vehicle because his city-issued sport-utility vehicle was having brake problems. On the way, he intentionally crashed the SUV into a fence on Weber Road when the brakes failed, he wrote in an accident report.
It recalled the crash in 2002 when a ladder truck slammed into Patrick J’s Bar and Grille on N. High Street, injuring several firefighters and patrons. Firefighters said the brakes failed; city officials said firefighters didn’t operate them correctly.
City maintenance workers and a private company found no problems with the brakes on the SUV; they attributed that crash to road ice. The city also blamed the failure of the pumper at the Franklinton house fire on operator error; officials also said the mother and children likely had died by the time firefighters arrived.
Police have similar complaints about their vehicles. Cmdr. Mike Springer, who was placed in charge of the division’s fleet five months ago, wrote Chief James G. Jackson last week that the division has been given only 30 percent of the money it has requested for replacement vehicles since 2000.
He said police and fire officials can junk vehicles, but they aren’t given the money to replace them all.
“If I called the fleet deplorable, some would call me an optimist,” Springer said in an interview.
About 40 percent of the 450 Columbus police cruisers exceed the 100,000-mile limit recommended by the National Association of Fleet Administrators, according to city records.
The National Fire Protection Association recommends that cities the size of Columbus keep their engines no more than nine years. Seven of the division’s 32 engines exceed that.
“I’m concerned we’re going to have trouble replacing our fleet fast enough,” Deputy Fire Chief Jerry Mason said.
Fleet Management manager Dan Giangardella said it is city policy to replace a vehicle when repairs exceed the car’s book value. But the city’s records show that it sometimes spends on repairs two to three times what a new vehicle would cost. One example: It spent $71,663 repairing a 2000 police van that cost about $28,000 new.
Last year, Fleet Management spent $15.6 million maintaining its 3,200 vehicles, compared with $13.9 million five years ago. The amount of time fire vehicles were out for repairs has increased 35 percent the past five years; with police vehicles, the increase is 50 percent, city records show.
Fleet Management charges city departments for vehicle repairs, which Walter Burnett, a trustee with the national association, said is a good way to keep track of how much each department spends on repairs.
In July, Fleet Management informed other departments that the hourly rate for city mechanics was jumping from $54 to $69 an hour -- retroactive to Jan. 1.
The same month the increase was announced, Fleet Management asked the City Council to spend $26 million to build it a new maintenance facility on the East Side.
“It looks like there is a huge increase in safety costs, but that’s being used to increase the budget in other areas,” firefighters union President Jack Reall said, referring to the new Fleet Management building.
Giangardella said some fees are going toward the new building, but that the fleet needed the increase after operating several years without raising fees.
Replacing some of the fleet buildings with one central location will be more cost-efficient, Coleman said.
“That (fleet) building we have on Short Street was built for buggies,” the mayor quipped.
In the 90 seconds the fire crew waited inside the burning Franklinton home, their pleas for water could be heard over division radios.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” a firefighter inside the house yells for his comrades to “charge” the line. “We’ve got partial collapse of the third-floor ceiling coming in! Let’s go!”
The type of pumper engine that failed, called a “camelback,” has had problems ever since it arrived in 2000, division officials said.
On April 11, Battalion Chief Mark Devine had ordered 10 people evacuated as fire spread through an apartment building on Elmwood Avenue. Before everyone could get out, Engine 25, a camelback, suddenly stopped pumping, Devine said.
Fortunately, he already had started the evacuation and another engine on the scene quickly replaced it.
The camelbacks were less-expensive commercial trucks converted to fire engines that the city bought to save money, Reall said.
Fire Chief Ned Pettus said he has asked the division to determine when the camelbacks can be replaced.
Roby Hayworth, the Fire Division’s liaison to Fleet Management, said the pumper might have failed because it was parked so one side was 8 inches lower than the other, or because the parking brake was set with the vehicle being in neutral.
Fire officials -- not fleet administrators -- chose camelback trucks, city Finance Director Joel Taylor said.
“I don’t care who bought it,” Reall said. “It puts firefighters and citizens at risk.”
In November, Cmdr. Springer was asked to report to city administrators on the status of the police fleet.
The report, which says the division needs $7.2 million to bring the police fleet up to snuff, is a “wish list,” Deputy Safety Director Barb Seckler said.
The division is “capably equipped,” Seckler said. “The city does a good job of balancing fleet needs with the budget.”
Springer’s report said five of the past six years, the Coleman administration replaced less than half the 80 cruisers national experts recommend the city buy annually.
The city bought 108 police cruisers last year and plans to buy 46 more this year.
But that wasn’t enough to make up for the years of reduced purchases, said Jim Gilbert, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Capital City Lodge No. 9.
“Some of these vehicles just aren’t safe,” he said.
Cleveland replaces front-line police cruisers every five years and large vehicles every 10 years, said Dan Novak, commissioner for the city’s vehicle maintenance.
City departments are supposed to work with Fleet Management to determine when vehicles should be junked.
But last month Springer started junking vehicles he deemed unsafe. So far, he’s up to 79 vehicles.
Safety Director Mitchell Brown said Friday that he will change the policy so that he must give his approval before a vehicle is junked.
Box Story: Average mileage on city vehicles
Police wagons -- 130,559
Medics -- 114,778
Cruisers -- 82,652
Snowplows -- 43,771
Garbage trucks -- 38,230
Street sweepers -- 4,817
Ladder trucks -- 52,783
Engine trucks -- 78,783