A 10% unemployment rate in the U.S. means fewer tax dollars collected. As result, governments are struggling to keep up funding levels and have no choice but to cut public-safety budgets. In fact, veteran chief and interim U.S. Fire Administrator Glenn Gaines said that he, too, is struggling to procure needed federal funding and expects many of his revenue sources to be cut or eliminated altogether.

“There are future issues we must keep in mind, including the economy and the fact that we may not stay funded [by federal budgets] at the current level,” Gaines said. “As a result, we will all have to work smarter and better with fewer resources.”

Fire chiefs need to brace themselves, Gaines said. He expects that programs slashed during the recession will never again receive funding, even if the economy improves, and may be permanently eliminated. What concerns him most is that prevention and mitigation programs have suffered disproportionately compared to other areas of fire service.

Such programs are being cut right when they are needed most, said Sherri Wilcox, a fire inspector with Las Vegas Fire and Rescue. Because of the weak economy, landowners are abandoning properties — leaving vacant buildings and unmaintained fire-prevention systems that birth hotter and faster-burning fires.

A fully funded fire-prevention program can record and map such high-risk areas, which is important to overall fire safety, Wilcox said. When inspectors have records on unoccupied buildings or code violators, they can work with fire chiefs using in-house mapping software systems to identify high-risk areas where vacant properties are concentrated. Such data can be particularly helpful when chiefs are considering scheduled brownouts, she said.

“If a fire chief is considering brownouts or trying to schedule them, they can take into account the vacant properties, not just run volume from several years ago,” Wilcox said

To support the effort, Wilcox asked chiefs to ensure that fire-prevention divisions are included in their 2011 annual operating budget. She said that fire chiefs can use overall fire-dollar loss comparisons to justify such divisions.

“I'd encourage those in charge of budgeting to try to consider the end result of the fire-prevention divisions,” Wilcox said. “In our city, we've been able to show we have a lower overall fire-dollar loss than comparable cities, and that's a combination of prevention and quick suppression activity.”

Gaines is sympathetic. However, cities don't have the money to pay for fire-prevention divisions and related programs and are cutting line firefighters in career departments, where payroll makes up about 80% of an annual operating budget. That means fire-service officials now must find their own money, by seeking out public/private partnerships or applying for federals grants to replace staff and fund fire-prevention programs.

Gaines emphasized the importance of applying for federal grants, because a large number of applications would support the argument that additional funding needs to be allocated to the fire service.

“Fire-service leadership must participate in order to demonstrate to Congress, and our political leadership, that the need far outweighs the funding level,” he said.

Not OK

Because of budget cuts, fire chiefs across the nation are being forced to employ extreme tactics in order to make ends meet. In Oklahoma City, the city council mandated that each department cut it's budget about 4% to adjust for the shortfall in tax collection. Fire Chief Keith Bryant soon will be forced to lay off 29 of his 950 firefighters — his only option, as the department already shaved $10 million from its $111 million 2010 annual operating budget by slashing fire-prevention programs and line items.

“We've taken all of those measures and now we are at the point where staffing cuts and decreased service delivery are our only options,” he said.

Bryant doesn't have the option of choosing where staff cuts are made. The collective-bargaining agreement mandates that personnel are cut from the bottom up, meaning that those with the least seniority or line firefighters must go first — which ultimately means taking apparatus out of service. He said that staff cuts would lead to increased response times to the nearly 80,000 calls the department fields annually, as well as increase risk to property and life in areas where an apparatus is out of service.

“That doesn't even take into account an increased demand for mainly EMS calls at around 5% annually,” Bryant said.

Like many chiefs, Bryant is in a precarious position and has to determine which services are most needed to protect the community given the resources afforded. He's not happy about the cuts, but advises others to “base decisions around your mission and core services while minimizing the impact to service delivery.”

To avoid layoffs, some fire chiefs have started browning out stations. San Diego Chief Javier Mainar didn't want to brownout one to eight engine companies daily from his 13 fire stations, especially at a time when EMS calls in the city have increased from about 65,000 in 2004 to more than 78,000 in 2009. But he refused to layoff any of his 850 firefighters.

Mainar was in a pickle. He already had reduced his budget from $199 million to $187 million through administrative-staff, community-education and lifeguard-services cuts.

In the end, the brownouts saved jobs and money, as firefighters displaced by the closed stations are used to fill in for sick-leave or vacation absences, saving $11.5 million worth of overtime costs. Mainar advised chiefs under similar budget pressures to engage stakeholders, including elected officials, fire-department management and the community to discuss options. If major cuts are made, it's important to inform the public.

“We made it clear [to the community] there would be service impacts,” he said. “If you cut [fire] resources back and conversely something bad happens, tell the community. They deserve to know.”

In fact, bad things will happen. A San Diego toddler choked on a gumball and died in late July. Authorities said that police officers arrived roughly five minutes after the 911 call, but firefighters and an ambulance reached the scene some 4H minutes after that. The national standard response time for firefighters is within five minutes, 90% of the time.

“We are sure that the brownout played at least some small role in the incident,” a spokesperson said.

Some cities are avoiding layoffs and brownouts altogether by going back to the bargaining table with unions. In San Francisco, firefighter union officials reached an agreement with the executive board and mayor's office to forgo pay raises to save the city $18 million over the next two years, said Chief Joanne Hayes-White. As part of the agreement, firefighters will relinquish about 8% in future wages.

“By foregoing wage increases, they've assisted the administration in not having to brownout or layoff any firefighters,” she said.

Hayes-White said that she's been under pressure to cut costs, and such concessions by firefighters will help her shave $13 million from the department's $275 million operating budget. Over the past few years, the department has managed to cut costs without having to lay off line firefighters or EMTs/paramedics, or temporarily deactivate units, Hayes-White said. Instead, the department eliminated administrative positions and one battalion chief, and didn't replace positions after someone retired.

Hayes-White also reconfigured how the department staffed EMS. Personnel no longer work 24-hour shifts. Instead, the department implements peak-period staffing, bulking up when its resident 800,000 population doubled during the workweek from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“So instead of having a fixed number of ambulances working at any given time, we staff up during the peak periods, and then we will drop off during the slower times,” Hayes-White said.

Strange Bedfellows

Federal grants can help fund programs and staffing, even in small-town fire departments. In fact, the Crawfordsville (Ind.) Fire Department may be one of the few departments actually hiring — instead of firing — fire-service personnel. The ALS department was awarded a $1 million SAFER grant to hire nine firefighter/paramedics to meet the rising demand for EMS and fire services that come in tough economic times, Chief Eric Small said.

“When times are bad, first-responder service requests boom — including an increase in arson cases or structure fires where home owners or commercial landowners have slacked on needed maintenance due to lack of money,” Small said. “Medical calls rise because residents must cut back on medical care and prescriptions.”

The Crawfordsville department currently has 38 career firefighters who make 3,000 runs a year, 2,100 of which are EMS-oriented. Call volume continues to increase, yet the number of firefighters on staff hadn't changed in 20 years, Small said. In addition, the department does not meet NFPA 1710 requirements for the organization and deployment of fire-suppression operations.

Small met with his city council and pitched the SAFER grant initially to pay for hiring the nine firefighters for two years, with the third year being paid by the city. With the council's support, the department hired a grant writer for $4,000.

“The grant writer was someone affiliated with the fire service who worked with us to help increase our chances, versus having someone at the department do it who may not have the expertise,” Small said.

Part of the process was to determine how the department would pay firefighter salaries after the SAFER grant funding depleted after two years. Small said that funds recouped from EMS might supplement the salaries; last year, the department raised $400,000 in ambulance transfer fees — half of which were returned to the city, and the other half placed in a fire department non-revert fund to pay for apparatus replacements.

Small credits part of this success to informing city officials about the grant. Supplemented by recouped ambulance fees, the officials quickly recognized the funding's potential. However, it was important to ensure that everyone was kept apprised during the entire grant process, he said.

“I wanted to keep officials as educated as possible, because the whole purpose of the grant is to get that money to maintain or increase manpower to better service our community,” Small said.

Grants are one option. Creating public-private/partnerships is another. That method helped the Shreveport (La.) Fire Department deploy single-paramedic, rapid-intervention non-transport (SPRINT) units instead of full-sized fire engines on medical calls, said Chief Brian Crawford.

Crawford conducted a pilot program that showed SUVs were more economical to maintain and service compared to full-sized engines, and could respond to medical calls quicker. In the past, when an EMS call came in, the closest engine company was deployed. Because there are 20 engines and only 10 ambulances in the department, “the chances are the engine will get to a patient faster than an ambulance,” he said.

“But it didn't make sense that we were sending a piece of equipment that was never designed to make 10, 12, 15 runs a day for EMS calls,” Crawford said.

After conducting the pilot program, Crawford found that using SUVs for medical calls instead of fire engines saved the department money. He went to the city council with his data and asked for start-up money to purchase a few vehicles. The vehicles cost about $100,000 each — $25,000 for the Ford Expedition through a state contract and $75,000 for medical equipment.

The city was sympathetic, but denied Crawford's request.

But he was determined to keep the program alive, so he turned to the private sector for help. He made a list of more than 10 corporate businesses and individuals he knew who could sponsor seven units, developed a detailed business plan, and prepared to pitch the SPRINT program. He approached Willis Knight Medical Health Systems — a company he worked with for 10 years as a flight paramedic on a hospital helicopter — and arranged an appointment with the president and the health system's board, hoping they would sponsor one truck.

Crawford explained to board members that Station 8, located near their main hospital, was one of the first firehouses that would receive a SPRINT vehicle. This helped his sales pitch, he said. But the board also liked the fact that a fire engine didn't arrive at the health-care facility, which included an elderly assistance home.

“The board noted that every time there is a medical call to the elderly home, a fire engine arrived, scaring residents,” he said. “As a result, many times the hospital had to field numerous calls from residents who feared there was a fire in the building.”

Crawford said that the hospital board was most impressed with his fiscally responsible business plan that included data from the pilot study and from other departments with similar programs. It showed quantitatively how the program would provide a better level of first-response and EMS to citizens, and how those individuals transported to the hospital's facility for further care would have a better chance of surviving.

“In essence, we were enhancing the hospital's capabilities,” he said.

The president asked about the costs associated with the program's start-up. Crawford told them it was $700,000 for all of the vehicles. To his surprise, the board agreed to sponsor the entire program.

Crawford said that chiefs need to consider private/public partnerships to fund public-safety programs.

“The businesses out there are willing to step up to the plate and be good, civic-minded community supporters,” he said. “A lot of times they are just waiting to be asked to help.”

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