Interesting article reflecting the FD in EMS in
The Washington Post. That is, however, a subtopic in this article, which mainly focuses on the lack of need for such large departments with excessive payrolls and budgets. The comments are hilarious, the firefighters are up in arms that someone (a university law & economics professor) put some statistics together and is seemingly anti-paid FF and anti IAFF. I think he makes a lot of sense, but I don't agree with every point. Valid questions are raised.
While I agree that FD budgets and salaries are too high, and that there should be less fire engines and more ambulances, I do not agree that all FDs should be volunteer.
I post the article and its flaming rebuttal - seriously... This guy has got these firemen all
fired up! (pun intended)
Article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...c647a395_story.html?postshare=901441781301698
Rebuttal: (one of many as you can imagine)
http://www.statter911.com/2015/09/0...ton-post-should-be-ashamed-for-publishing-it/
Seriously, that's the best that you can do, there are less fires, so replace reduce staffing and deployment, and somehow reverse the trend of dwindling volunteer participation and replace the career members? I almost spit my drink all over my computer when the author used the rationale that the Revolutionary War soldiers were volunteers, so firefighters should be the same. Using that logic, we should replace EMS, police, nurses, and perhaps even incoroprate volunteers into our Armed Services to replace paid soldiers. At least he admits that firefighter salaries can more than double with OT. So, with that admission, we can take his LA average salary of $142,000, and realize that the pay before any OT would be $70k/yr or less, not really out of place in a region with a high cost of living such as LA. Realize as well regarding OT budgets that if the OT burden becomes too great, they will hire more employees. There is always a balancing act where it costs less to pay out OT rather than hire more people, since it cost $$$ to hire, train, gear, pay benefits, and retirement to more employees. To a point, paying existing employees 1.5x is the cheaper option.
Also, it's not "the firefighters are up in arms that someone (a university law & economics professor) put some statistics together," it's Dave Statter, a civilian reporter that runs a fire blog, not a member of service.
I've explained numerous times on this forum that the fact that fires are less frequent is not a justification to reduce staffing and deployment of suppression resources. Fires still occur, and many residential building s do not have sprinklers. Fires burn much hotter, and much more rapidly than before, due to the proliferation of type V construction (lightweight wood construction) which has a high fire load, and a large degree of synthetic materials in most homes, which also burns hotter, faster, and gives of more toxic byproducts than natural materials that were found in older homes. If anything, there needs to be a more rapid response time than there has been in the past, and there needs to be an adequate number of firefighters on each apparatus to quickly accomplish vital fireground tasks upon arrival.
Don't take my word for it, look instead at these two links. The first is a NIST video from UL that compares a legacy room to a modern room, and the difference in time to flashover. The second video is from the NIST studies that we did in Crystal City in Arlington VA. I participated in this study. The purpose of the study was to show how different staffing and deployment scenarios affected the timeliness of various fireground tasks.
http://www.firefighternation.com/videos/legacy-and-modern-fire-behavior
http://www.nist.gov/fire/staffstudies.cfm
The author also chose to focus on figures regarding confirmed structure fires, and conveniently overlooked all of the other supression-related calls. I don't see how terrorism training would significantly increase staffing levels. He's reaching really far with that one. Just like fire has it's "food on the stove," smells and bells, minor outside fires and such, EMS gets it's share of false alarm medical alarms, pt. refusals, no pt. found, things like that, and also what I would call a scourge of unnecessary transports, which would be patients that are able to transport themselves to urgent care of their PCP, for conditions that will not have a change in outcome from using (abusing) EMS resources to txp to the ED.
This was also a regurgitation of a similar article from 2002. I can say from personal observation, at least in the Northern VA/MD/DC area, that there has been a decrease in volunteer staffing/participation, and an increase of career staffing for area departments. More and more stations that were formerly 100% volunteer now have daytime paid crews, and combo stations progressed to 24/7/365 paid crews. For example:
http://www.wboc.com/story/9693807/gainesville-volunteer-fire-department-dissolved
Fred's old article:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/Mcchesneyfire.html
I challenge you to review Dave Statter's response, and show how/where he is inaccurate. I agree with Dave when he says that the article was "Truly one of the dumbest articles ever written about firefighting & the Washington Post should be ashamed for publishing it." I was astonished at how overwhelmingly ignorant that piece was. To someone that doesn't know any better, the article would seem interesting, but when you look at the actual facts his logic fails in grand fashion.
With spare units in every station in case of a national disaster! Terr'ism and backdrafts can come out of nowhere!