CITY COUNCIL: Policy Direction Regarding the Hiring of Three New Firefighters

Meeting Date: September 9, 2008
Prepared by: George E. Rawson

City Council
Agenda Item Summary

Name: Receive report and provide policy direction to hire three new firefighters.

Description: The Fire Department seeks to add three new full-time firefighter positions to improve staffing coverage. The category of “firefighter” will be classified as a full-time position in accordance to the provisions of Municipal Code section 2.52.055. Adding three firefighters will ensure that a 24/7, stable level of
staffing is maintained in accordance with Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) requirements and National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) guidelines.

Overall Cost:
City Funds: $324,000 annually

Staff Recommendation: Staff recommends that City Council approve hiring three additional firefighters.

Important Considerations: The ambulance assigned to the fire station is staffed with two medical responders, both of whom are cross-trained as firefighters. When the
ambulance is committed to medical calls, these firefighters are temporarily unavailable, consequently depleting front-line firefighter capability. Adding
three new firefighters will resolve this problem by ensuring a constant staffing level.

Decision Record: None

Reviewed by:

______________________________ _________________
Rich Guillen, City Administrator Date


TO: MAYOR McCLOUD AND COUNCIL MEMBERS
THROUGH: RICH GUILLEN, CITY ADMINISTRATOR
FROM: GEORGE E. RAWSON, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC SAFETY
ANDREW MILLER, FIRE CHIEF
DATE: SEPTEMBER 9, 2008
SUBJECT: RECEIVE REPORT AND PROVIDE POLICY DIRECTION TO HIRE THREE NEW FIREFIGHTERS
_______________________________________________________________________
I. RECOMMENDED MOTION:
Provide policy direction.

II. BACKGROUND:
The City faces significant fire protection challenges. The two of most concern are
conflagration fires due to the potential of a wildland/urban interface fire and the
commercial zone fires. The City of Carmel-by-the-Sea is heavily forested, bordered by a canyon to the north and an open space nature preserve park to the south. Between these borders are high-density residential and commercial occupancies built on a slope from the ocean to the forest. Based on the nature of the terrain, weather and available fuels, the State has placed the majority of the City into its highest threat category, the “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.” Furthermore, the commercial zone has several large, multi-story, antiquated buildings that are closely built, which pose significant access problems. Many of these buildings lack fire sprinkler systems. These threat assessments must be carefully considered, especially in light of past out-of-control fires, most recently in Big Sur, as well as the devastating 1987 Pebble Beach fire.

There have been several new state and federal laws, regulations and standards that limit the flexibility of cities in determining their staffing levels, training, and methods of operation. These are given an abbreviated overview below:

1. 1999 OSHA Staffing Policies – Most commonly known as the 2-in-2-out rule; this federal/state regulation requires that a minimum of two firefighters work as a team inside structure fires, and a minimum of two firefighters be on standby outside the structure to provide assistance or perform rescue, should the firefighters working interior firefighting operations have trouble exiting the building or become trapped. The only exception to this regulation is when there is a known imminent rescue.

2. May 2001 National Staffing Guidelines – The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standard on Career Fire Service Deployment. NFPA 1710 calls for four-person fire crew staffing, arriving on one or two apparatus as a “company.” The initial attack crew should arrive at the emergency within four minutes travel time, 90 percent of the time, and the total effective response force of 14 (15 with aerial apparatus) should arrive within eight minutes travel time, 90 percent of the time.

3. October 1999 California OSHA Changes – AB 1127 legislation made all of the OSHA regulations applicable to local government, including fines and a huge increase in criminal penalties under Cal/OSHA. Individual managers and supervisors (Fire Chiefs – Incident Commanders) may now be fined up to $250,000 and be imprisoned for up to four years for failure to take appropriate safety precautions. Criminal fines range up to a maximum of $3.5 million for corporations and limited liability companies (cities & special districts).

The Carmel-by-the-Sea Fire Department (CFD) is a one station, six-person department.
Daily staffing consists of two of the six fulltime personnel assigned to the fire station on a 24/7/365 basis. Of the six full-time career employees, three are captains and three are engineers. In order to conform to the two-in-two-out federal regulation, the Fire Department also contracts via a Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) with the Carmel Regional Fire Ambulance Authority (CRFA) for additional firefighting staff. The CRFA provides an ambulance staffed with one emergency medical technician and one paramedic, both of whom are cross trained as firefighters. During each shift at the Carmel fire station, the two CRFA firefighters supplement Carmel’s daily staffing by two for a total of four firefighters. The full-time staff is supported by a limited number of paid-call (volunteer) firefighters who assist as needed.

The ability to use volunteers to supplement paid personnel is no longer viable. OSHA
and other regulatory actions have made it more difficult for the CFD to maintain a cadre of volunteers. Due to the growth in society of complex systems and technology, the fire service was given more missions, such as emergency medical services, hazardous materials response, and technical rescue. This has dramatically increased the legally mandated training hours for volunteers, causing many to drop out. Rising firefighter injuries and deaths, especially in the volunteer ranks, have created more safety regulations and training minimums to be placed on all firefighters. For instance: in January 2004 California Volunteer Firefighters – New laws (Assembly Bills 2118 and SB 1207) require volunteer firefighters to receive the same level of training that the fulltime staff receives. In part it “provides that the California Occupational Safety and Health Act applies to volunteer firefighters. Equipment and training for volunteers to meet the same requirements as regular firefighters.”

Due to these regulatory changes, today’s volunteers must give significantly more time
and effort to undergo physical agility testing, background checks, and commit to
significant training requirements. So, the availability of volunteers in communities with high cost of living and home values like ours is rapidly diminishing and is no longer a viable long-term solution to the need for readily available, trained firefighters.

With respect to the CRFA ambulance service, which remains a mission of the Fire
Department, the expectation is that such service always be prompt, efficient, and
professional. The Carmel ambulance service, however, has been compelled to spend
increased time out of the city due to the time it takes to transport a victim to the hospital, the automatic and mutual aid agreements with Monterey County’s private ambulance provider, and inadequate coverage by the countywide ambulance provider. For example, the CFD response data from July 1st, 2007 through June 30th 2008 identified the following:
• A total of 1,131 calls for service.
• 907 of the total were ambulance calls.
• 271 of these calls were “auto/mutual aid” meaning the ambulance was out of the
city of Carmel-by-the-Sea (23% of total).
• 220 calls for service in Carmel were while the CRFA ambulance was committed
out of the city, thus leaving the CFD engine down-staffed to only two (20% of the
total).

Based on this data, the two CRFA firefighters were committed and unavailable to assist CFD firefighters for approximately 440 hours (estimated at an average of two hours per out-of-city response) over this one-year period. It should be noted that any time the CRFA ambulance transports a patient to the hospital from the Carmel area, turnaround time averages between 60 and 90 minutes. If the transport is out of the area, it could take two or more hours, depending on the distance from Carmel.

These statistics do not take into account that the CRFA ambulance will move to the Carmel Valley Fire District, Mid-Valley station for emergency medical training, ambulance coverage, meetings and other logistical needs. There have also been numerous times when the Carmel ambulance is placed out-of-service for short periods of time due to the unavailability of staffing.

Despite Carmel’s best efforts to schedule staffing complying with the OSHA two-in-twoout regulation and the NFPA Standard 1710, it is quite apparent that noncompliance
occurs in those instances when the CRFA ambulance is committed to an emergency
medical response and/or transport. In such cases, the ambulance is deemed out-of-service for in-city medical responses for approximately an hour or more (depending if the EMS response/transport is in, or out of the City).

Consequently, when the CRFA ambulance is unavailable, the CFD is reduced to only two
fire personnel and must rely on automatic-aid response from the Cypress and Carmel
Valley Fire Protection District’s and/or CFD off-duty and paid-call personnel (when
available) to comply with the OSHA two-in-two-out regulations. This is not a desirable scenario due to firefighter safety issues, delayed fire attack, increased response times, and the unknown availability status of neighboring fire agencies resources, CFD off-duty and paid-call personnel.

The cities of Pacific Grove, Monterey, and Carmel retained Citygate Associates, LLC, to conduct an assessment of the feasibility to fully or partially consolidate fire agencies. The study concluded such an undertaking was operationally and economically feasible, but points out that no matter what Carmel does for long-term fire protection planning, the City’s Fire Department staffing must include three additional firefighters in order to achieve constant engine staffing requirements, in accordance with current response standards.

It should also be mentioned that in the near future, the cities of Pacific Grove and
Monterey intend to merge the two fire departments. The justification for this action is based on a need to curtail future increased expenses and to establish a staffing solution that ensures long-term sustainability, adequate staffing standards and right sized administrative function. The City of Carmel-by-the-Sea is not a participant in the fire merger, but city officials are attending the meetings occurring between Monterey and Pacific Grove, and have not ruled out the option of Carmel participating in the merger.

This issue will be formally brought to Council for consideration at a future date.

III. STAFF REVIEW:
The answer to managing these identified threats to the City is the speed and weight of the initial fire response. It is essential that the first fire company on scene must be capable of containing a fire before it spreads. In the "flashover" stage of structural fire growth a small incipient fire can grow to involve the entire room in a four- to five-minute timeframe. This is the critical point in time with which fire departments want to arrive with adequate staffing and deploy their resources. Flashover is a critical stage of fire growth for two reasons: no living thing in the room of origin will survive, so the chances for firefighters to save lives drops dramatically; and flashover creates a quantum jump in the rate of combustion and a significantly greater amount of water is needed to reduce the burning material below its ignition temperature. A post-flashover fire burns hotter and
moves faster, compounding the search and rescue and fire spread and endangers
firefighters. From the standpoint of a vegetation fire, it is critical for the fire to be controlled and/or extinguished in the initial stage before the fire spreads beyond the capability of the first-in engine company. It is well known throughout the fire service that all fires start small and are controllable in the beginning with early notification, quick response time and adequate staffing by the initial responding fire company.

Both of the potential fire spread scenarios identified above are contingent upon the initial response time, and staffing capability of the first arriving company. Fortunately, our city Fire Department has excellent response times to any location within the City, averaging four minutes or less, well above the national average of five minutes or less 90% of the time. The problem is the uncertainty of the initial response staffing, based on the location of the ambulance. When the ambulance is out of position due to a patient transport or automatic/mutual aid response, the on-duty staffing reduces by 50%, down to only two fire personnel to cover the City. This downsize in staffing could essentially mean the difference between performing a rescue, holding a structural fire to pre-flashover stage, or a vegetation fire to the area of origin.

The only way to ensure adequate (albeit not optimal) initial attack staffing is to increase the current minimum staffing in the CFD from two to three fulltime fire personnel on a 24/7/365 basis. This increase in minimum staffing would also benefit the CFD capability when responding to other emergency incidents such as medical emergencies, vehicle accidents, rescues, hazardous materials/environmental incidents and other fire-related responses. In all of the above categories of response, the Duty Chief also responds and can be considered part of the 2-in-2-out response.
Other advantages of the increased CFD staffing are as follows:
• Supports the city’s priority to enhance emergency preparedness.
• Increases off-duty call back capability capacity.
• Allows for more FD staff hours committed to fire prevention and loss reduction
activities, life and fire safety inspections, public education, infrastructure
maintenance and inspection and other related duties.
• Enhances customer service through program management such as CPR classes,
CERT training, public education and other related opportunities to interact with
our community.

Another point of interest for consideration is the staffing standards in neighboring fire agencies. Furthermore, the Monterey County Fire Mutual Aid Plan requires all mutualaid immediate need responses be staffed with a minimum of three fire personnel. Listed below are examples of “minimum staffing standards” in neighboring fire agencies:
• Cypress Fire Protection District: four personnel on engines.
• Pebble Beach Community Services District: four personnel on truck; three personnel on engine.
• Carmel Highlands Fire Protection District: three personnel on engine.
• Monterey Fire Department: three personnel on all apparatus.
• Seaside Fire Department: three personnel on all apparatus.
• Pacific Grove Fire Department: two personnel on all apparatus (it should be noted that the Pacific Grove companies run tandem providing for four personnel on fire and rescue responses).
• Carmel Valley Fire Protection District: two personnel all apparatus. (it should be noted that its engine company will not respond to a fire call until off duty or paid-call respond back to up-staff apparatus to four personnel and it has a 2nd engine in its system.)

IV. FISCAL IMPACT:
On an annual basis, the cost of hiring three new fulltime firefighters is approximately $324,000 (or $27,000 per month). For the current fiscal year, the budget impact will depend on when the firefighters are hired. Funding for these three new positions will come from postponing filling other open positions in the FY 2008-09 budget.

V. SUMMARY:
Staff is seeking policy direction to increase the Carmel-by-the-Sea firefighter staffing level. Per NFPA 1710, OSHA’s standard of 2-in-2-out, the Citygate study, and the City’s own internal study (Public Safety Team Report February 2003), it is essential to increase our daily fire engine minimum staffing. Staff recommends the Council authorize three firefighter positions to bring the fire engine minimum staffing up from two to three. This enhancement will bring use closer to a state of operational readiness to enable CFD to significantly increase the ability to effectively deploy a properly staffed engine company within the nationally recognized response time and staffing standards, thus enhancing our capability of protecting lives, property and the environment.