By Patrick Anderson
The Gloucester Daily Times
GLOUCESTER, Mass. — The fire that burned the top floor of a Maplewood Avenue house early Monday started less than a day after budget reductions, retirements and systemic staffing problems had left the Gloucester Fire Department with fewer men to respond to emergencies than at any time in the last 17 years.
For 24 hours starting Saturday, firefighter absences pulled the department down to 11 men on duty -- seven below the 18-man minimum recommended in the firefighters’ contract, and too few to keep any of Gloucester’s three fire sub-stations open or its ambulances running.
During that period, 7 a.m. Saturday to 7 a.m. Sunday, only a fire engine and ladder truck from the main fire station were available to answer calls. At times during the overnight, when those trucks were out on calls, Deputy Chief Miles Schlichte and a dispatcher were the only ones left in the main fire station.
“If the Maplewood fire had happened on Saturday, we may not have been able to contain it like we did,” Schlichte said Monday.
The manpower shortfall Saturday was the latest example of a growing gap between the money the city has to spend on public services and the cost of funding the Fire Department while meeting all of the contractual obligations it has made to its employees.
The shift fell to 11 after six firefighters exercised their contractual right to either vacation time, a personal day or a sick day. The department’s overtime budget was exhausted more than a month ago.
During the night of the 2008 Super Bowl involving the New England Patriots that February, six firefighters on vacation, sick or personal days had left 12 on the shift and caused the first closure of all three substations since 1992.
But since the latest round of reductions, each shift has been cut from a starting point of 18 men to 17 men, and when six were unavailable, it left 11 on duty, too few to open a substation or run the city ambulance.
For the shift starting Saturday morning, two firefighters called in sick, two had scheduled vacation, one was fulfilling obligations as a military reservist and Schlichte missed the day part of the shift to attend professional development classes. Schlichte returned for the night shift, replacing someone who went off duty.
For years, firefighters and their union have demanded the city either hire more firefighters or provide more overtime to backfill time off.
The firefighters’ contract provides each employee with between 10 and 20 shifts of vacation each year, depending on longevity. Each firefighter gets 18 sick days per year, three of which can be used as personal days, and sick days can be carried between years.
The union sued the city last month and asked a Superior Court judge to force Mayor Carolyn Kirk and City Council to include enough money in the budget to maintain the minimum of 18 firefighters on duty for all shifts, as outlined in an agreement with the city in 2006.
But three weeks ago, Judge Timothy Feeley threw the suit out on procedural grounds and the recession-year budget cutting that has wracked communities across the state has continued in Gloucester.
In the latest wave of enticed early retirements of city employees, the Fire Department lost four firefighting positions -- out of 22 citywide -- including Chief Barry McKay and a clerk. The Police Department lost four patrolmen, two senior officers and a meter maid.
The latest reductions bring the total Gloucester firefighting force down to 68 men, from a high near 100 in previous decades.
While all city departments are being cut, the measurable loss of emergency response has the potential to test how far local government services can be reduced before residents miss them.
When the city ambulance is out of commission because of loss of manpower, emergency medical calls are served by ambulances from private companies or neighboring towns.
In the period between Saturday and Sunday morning, when there were only 12 firefighters, there were seven emergency medical calls that the city ambulance could not field.
Rescue services bill patients for ambulance transports to the hospital with the price depending on the seriousness of treatment.
Bills average around $700 per trip for basic transport and $1,000 for transports that require more advanced care, according to Fire Department figures.
Based on those numbers, the city would have lost out on at least $5,000 for the missed trips over the weekend that were picked up by ambulances from either Beauport Ambulance Service in East Gloucester, Lyons Ambulance Service in West Gloucester or a Rockport town ambulance.
One of the calls included a trip to Rogers Street, where a man who was punched during a fight that began in the Old Timers Tavern lay injured in the street surrounded by a large group of people blocking the roadway. Around a half hour later, there was a call for a transport on Washington Street.
Since she took office more than a year ago, Kirk has cut back the overtime to the Fire and Police departments and asked the public safety chiefs to find ways to limit the use of sick days and personal days.
Yesterday, Kirk said that, with further state aid cuts for fiscal 2010 still possible, unless more firefighters decide to forgo days off, the staffing situation would either stay the same or get worse.
The city has opened talks with Gloucester police unions, Kirk said, on possible changes to language in their contracts to deal with less money and may explore something similar with firefighters in the future.
“A deterioration of service levels across the board is what the city should expect,” Kirk said.
“The answer,” she said, “has to be minimizing the number who don’t show up on a given day. It’s not just the city’s problem, it is the Fire Department’s problem. The money train is history.”