By John Hill
The Providence Journal
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — With a $15-million federal grant for firefighter training in hand, the city hopes to have 80 new firefighters ready to go on the job by this time next year, Public Safety Commissioner Steven Paré said Thursday.
The reinforcements are needed because the department has seen about 100 retirements in the past 18 months, he said. The department can staff up to 438 firefighters, but with the retirements and other departures, it is down to 342, which has created the need for increased callback and overtime cost expenses.
“This will help us,” Paré said of the $15 million the city is receiving under the federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) program.
Firefighter union President Paul Doughty agreed.
“This grant can be put to immediate use to fill some of the more than 100 firefighter vacancies that currently exist in the department and are responsible for the out of control number of callbacks,” he said.
But he also reiterated the union’s position that part of the city’s scheduling problem is self-inflicted because of a new workweeks that Mayor Jorge O. Elorza imposed on the department last summer.
“I am hopeful that Mayor Elorza takes this windfall and uses it to undo his ill-advised shift change and return the Fire Department to its previous schedule thereby reducing the rampant overtime currently gripping the department,” he said.
Providence’s $15 million was the biggest single SAFER grant this year, U.S. Sen Jack Reed said.
Reed’s spokesman, Chip Unruh, said Reed’s office was told the Providence application was well written and clearly showed how the 80 new hires would improve department operations, such as being able to increase from three to four the average number manning a first responding vehicle.
The department covers a large jurisdiction that handled a high number of calls, he said. It also got points for requiring new physical examinations for firefighters designed to detect underlying health conditions that could be exacerbated by the stresses of firefighting.
The City Council has been pushing the administration to start a fire academy since last year and council President Luis A. Aponte said the grant was obviously welcome.
“We need to be able to backfill those retiree numbers and ensure public safety,” he said.
About 650 people have already applied for firefighter jobs, Paré said, adding the city plans to seek applicants for another month or so. Applications are availabe on the city’s website, atwww.joinpvdfire.com.
In the past, Paré said the city has started with a pool of about 2,000 applicants for its fire academies. About half of those who initially apply don’t follow through, he said, and experience has been that the remainder is cut in half at each phase, such as background checks and physical agility testing, and then graduating from the academy itself.
- The application process and testing takes five or six months, he said, and the actual academy takes six months after that.
Copyright 2016 The Providence Journal