By Mark Morey
The Yakima Herald-Republic
YAKIMA, Wash. — Every three days, Yakima firefighters respond to a reported structure fire.
Crews from each of the city’s five stations converge on the scene, pushing to arrive within eight minutes minutes of leaving the station.
One engine is left behind in case of a second fire or first aid call. That single crew is enough to start dealing with the situation, but they will have to wait for a second crew before safely attacking a serious structure fire.
Right now, those six crews are on duty every day of the year.
That won’t be the case in 2012, when budget cuts eliminate $170,000 in overtime that has been used to fill shift vacancies.
Modeling based on the past 12-month period suggests the Yakima Fire Department could be without backup coverage for nearly 70 days a year.
Cutting even one firefighter, as had been proposed in initial budget talks, could extend the lack of multiple-incident coverage to nearly half the year.
The council has quizzed Fire Chief Dave Willson about staffing as members fashioned a 2012 budget, but most of its concern has focused on vacancies in the police department. And residents have also questioned why the fire department responds to medical calls.
Willson says current field staffing — 79 firefighters across three shifts — must be maintained in order to provide the same level of fire and medical service.
“We’ve got to keep operating no matter what, but we’re so down, it’s amazing,” Willson said.
Yakima has 87 authorized positions in the fire department: 79 that are directly involved in daily firefighting, plus the chief, two deputy chiefs, a deputy fire marshal, a training officer, a mechanic, an administrative assistant and a secretary.
Statistics prepared by Willson suggest that Yakima is lagging behind in typical staffing for departments in Washington and across the nation.
Calculating the appropriate level of staffing is a murky question, but Willson and others say that population-to-employee ratios offer one snapshot that can be helpful in comparing similar departments.
By that measure, Yakima sits at the bottom of the pile among similar-sized cities, according to Willson’s calculations.
Yakima has 0.95 fire employees for every 1,000 residents. Bellevue tops the range at 2 per 1,000 — the result of population density, tax base and fire potential that requires more firefighters.
Willson says the city would have to add 27 employees — mostly firefighters — to maintain the 1995 staffing level for today’s population. Another 10 employees would have to be added to reach the state average for departments serving cities between 46,000 and 125,000 population.
Even using midrange figures for those same agencies instead of averages, two dozen more firefighters would have to be added.
Regardless, Yakima’s increase in fire and aid calls has far outpaced the changes in staffing.
In 1995, the department responded to 5,430 calls using 67 personnel. Last year, firefighters responded to 10,011 calls. The city’s population has gone from 59,000 to 91,000 in those 16 years.
Yakima is also short on another measurement.
The National Fire Protection Association, which sets industry standards, calls for four crew members per engine.
Yakima uses three in order to spread available staff across as many stations as possible. A four-person crew would allow the first engine to fight the fire or begin to rescue someone from a house fire.
Under federal law and industry standards, two firefighters must be available outside for every two inside a burning structure. That allows the outside crews to steer water on the fire and to rescue the interior firefighters if needed.
Ken Willette, manager of the NFPA’s public fire protection division, said the standard can be used by chiefs as a benchmark to persuade funding agencies that more personnel are needed for effective operation.
However, “We acknowledge that the ultimate decision of what a community can afford is their budget,” Willette said.
Willson said he realizes that Yakima can’t financially support four-person crews. And current stations are geographically placed well enough to ensure that the first engine arrives within six minutes of the first alarm nearly 90 percent of the time, the national standard. The rest of the team should be there within 10 minutes of the alarm.
That means the crews can usually contain a growing fire to the room where it started; damage spreads if the wait is longer, with a total loss likely for times past 10 minutes.
For warehouse fires and other major incidents, additional city staff and surrounding agencies must be called in. Overtime money has been set aside to cover those contingencies.
The city’s fire insurance rating might also be affected by staffing. The rating combines fire staffing, hydrant availability, emergency dispatch capabilities and other factors to determine how well the city can respond to fires.
Not all insurance companies rely on the rating, but a decline from the current 4 rating to a 5 could push up insurance premiums for businesses that rely on major fire coverage.
Although a 10 percent increase is a rough rule of thumb, the Washington State Rating Bureau says it’s hard to know the actual impact on an individual business.
Meanwhile, the Fire Department is studying whether to recommend creating a regional fire authority that would cover Yakima, Union Gap and two smaller fire districts that contract with the cities for service.
The regional authority would be an independent taxing district, which would offer a stable funding source for fire service without relying on the City Council. Critics say it amounts to a tax increase, however.
If that doesn’t go through, Willson said, the department will keep looking for ways to operate with the available staff.
But he says that cutting out medical calls — which make up between 70 percent to 80 percent of any fire department’s responses — isn’t the answer.
If firefighters weren’t responding to aid calls, they would essentially spend their time waiting for the next fire. It’s better to find as much other work for them as possible, Willson said.
Earlier this month, Tacoma announced layoffs for 47 firefighters in order to balance its 2012 budget. The action has been put on hold while the union and the city review other options.
Willson suggested that he would be in the same position if the Yakima’s staffing had kept pace with the average for comparable Washington agencies. Without it, he maintains he needs the number of employees to at least stay where it is, if not be bumped up.
“We are doing pretty good with what we have,” he said.
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