By Kenny Klein
The Press Enterprise (Riverside, CA.)
Copyright 2006 The Press Enterprise, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
HEMET, Calif. — A rule that requires city firefighters to live within one hour’s drive of Hemet will stay in place for now but may have to be altered or eliminated at some point, a councilman and Hemet firefighting union officials said Wednesday.
Councilman Roger Meadows said this week that it was decided the requirement, which is designed to ensure that Hemet firefighters can respond to their stations quickly in the event of a disaster, temporarily stays in place.
But change will probably happen within the next year as the city plans to phase in its own paramedic program, Meadows said.
“When that time comes we (city officials and committee members) will have to look at it again,” Meadows said. “If we want to draw on qualified people (paramedics), we will probably have to do away with this residency requirement.”
In the past, fire union President Jeff Retmier called the policy “out of date” and it was probably put into place when the city and department were much smaller and depended on volunteers. With traffic congestion today, firefighters who live as close as Temecula could find they are out of compliance, he said.
John Muhr, union vice president, said, “At this point, we would rather not comment.”
As far as the city being left without enough resources to handle an emergency, Retmier has said there is already a system through which fire and other resources across the state could be sent to Hemet for a major disaster.
The Hemet Police Department has no residency requirement, except for those who have been assigned take-home patrol cars, Capt. Rob Webb said. They are required to live within seven miles of the Police Department, Webb said.
California Department of Forestry/Riverside County Fire spokeswoman Julie Hutchinson said there is no residency program at her agency.
The Hemet fire force has a chief, division chief, three battalion chiefs, 15 captains, 18 engineers and 21 firefighters to serve a population of about 70,000, Battalion Chief John Fielding said.
The fire budget is about $7.1 million a year, Fire Chief Bob Verburg said.