By Jonathan Norcross
The Post-Star
GLENS FALLS, N.Y. — Glens Falls’ new fire chief is on a mission to replenish his short-staffed, overworked department.
Craig Bascue, who has been with the city’s fire department for nearly 20 years, was named fire chief by the Board of Public Safety last month. Since then, he’s hired a new firefighter who started his regular shift on Monday, and he’s planning to add two more firefighters at the Board of Public Safety meeting on Wednesday. If he can make another hire in the weeks following that meeting, he’ll have rapidly filled all of his department’s openings.
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The new faces are necessary, Bascue said, because his department is burnt out working overtime.
“I think I’ve worked over 700 hours overtime myself in the last year,” Bascue told The Post-Star . “Not only is it a burden to your health and the wellness of yourself and your family atmosphere, you’re certainly a lot less efficient when you’re exhausted and tired out. So, there’s a huge safety aspect to that.”
Bascue credited Mayor Diana Palmer and the Board of Public Safety with allowing him to move quickly through the hiring process. “I can’t thank them enough,” he said.
In addition to the staffing shortage, the Glens Falls Fire Department has also been undermanned due to a series of injuries. One firefighter returned to action last week after suffering a back injury. Another firefighter broke a finger while combating a blaze at the Pregis Plant; he may return as soon as Friday. But Micki Guy “has a long road ahead of her,” Bascue said, after she fell from a firetruck in April, sustaining severe head trauma.
“She’s walking, she’s talking,” Bascue said. “I believe she’s scheduled to come home for rehab on Friday… She’s certainly got a long ways before she can do her daily functions, back to normalcy. But she’s tough. She’s really tough.”
There are also less visible wounds that can plague Glens Falls firefighters. Depression, burnout, and post-traumatic stress disorder are common in the field, Bascue said. But New York State’s CARES UP program might offer some aid. Its goal is to “promote organizational and cultural change that supports the mental health and wellness of uniformed personnel,” the program’s website states.
The City of Glens Falls received a CALLS UP grant, which has resulted in two of its firefighters receiving training on how to recognize mental health issues and help their colleagues get the care they need.
It was Guy who, prior to her tragic injury, helped acquire the grant and start the program.
“Something that’s definitely overlooked over the years in this career is the mental strain,” Bascue said. “Not only just from calls but hours of work.”
“They call it a brotherhood, but that’s because it is.”
Bascue was a volunteer firefighter for 17 years before joining the team in Glens Falls in April 2007. He spent 13 years as a firefighter, two years as a lieutenant, and nearly four years as a captain before being named chief. The new job has entailed a shift in the veteran firefighter’s usual routine.
“The administrative part is a different atmosphere,” Bascue said. “I’m not going on calls with the guys anymore, but I’m surprisingly enjoying it so far. It’s a change of pace, a next step in my career.”
Bascue said he enjoys seeing the excitement on the faces of new hires who are eager to respond to calls and charge into a burning building. Perhaps that’s not the average person’s idea of an exciting time, but it’s partly what separates firefighters from the rest of the population.
“It’s one of them things, either you love it or you hate it,” Bascue said. “I’ve certainly seen a lot of people that went into their first fire and they were done, they never wanted any more of it. But then the other side of that is the ones that do like it; once they’re hooked, they’re hooked. The difference, doing it as a career, is this is a family atmosphere here. We’re with each other, without the overtime, 24 hours. You learn the good and bad of everybody. It truly is a family. We eat, sleep, hear everybody’s problems. They call it a brotherhood, but that’s because it is.”
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