CALEB MCCLUSKEY
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo
(TNS)
TUPELO — Firefighting is an essential yet taxing profession that demands a lot of a person physically and mentally. Those demands lead to multiple challenges for the city of Tupelo, namely overtime and staffing problems.
The Tupelo Fire Department is the youngest it’s been in a long time, Fire Chief Brad Robinson said, leading to extra challenges including a need for more firefighters and overtime for the more seasoned staff.
“It was the perfect storm,” Robinson said of the recent spate of additional overtime. Tupelo’s city council recently amended the current budget in light of $275,000 in overtime wages last year. He noted the specific issues involved, such as the ice storm earlier this year, multiple injuries, the average age of the firefighters and the addition of a new first responder vehicle. “Regionally, (turnover) is a bigger deal.”
The department has 95 in its staff, with 30 on each shift. Of the 95, 21 are captains, 24 are sergeants, three are battalion chiefs, two are deputy fire chiefs and one is the fire chief himself. Each shift needs at least one captain and sergeant, and the rest comprise firefighters ranking on a scale of one to three.
There are multiple ranks in the department, starting with firefighter one, which is an uncertified firefighter. Firefighter two and three are different benchmarks that are reached through certifications and training.
“A year of these guys not having a certification kind of puts us in a bind,” Robinson said. “We train with these guys from day one when they come in the door. We get them ready to where we can start counting on them, but there are certain qualifications we have to hit before that.”
Sergeants are firefighters granted the rank through a promotional test. These firefighters operate the pump and drive the fire engines. Captains are a rank above sergeant that is also granted through promotional testing and handle the operations of the shift they manage.
As of Friday, all sergeants, captains and administrative positions are filled, with just one firefighter position vacant that Robinson said they are interviewing to fill now.
Since 2019, the department has hired 51 firefighters and 11 since the beginning of the 2023-24 fiscal year. He said that was just counting the people who stayed with the department, adding it takes a year for a fledgling firefighter to get certified. While he noted there was a turnover rate issue, the Tupelo Fire Department has taken less stress in turnovers. One of those 11 recently resigned.
One of the 11 that joined the department this year is Caleb McMurry, 18, who joined the department in April. He said he decided to look into either being a police officer or firefighter in junior year of high school before landing on firefighting.
“I think this is the best job I’ve ever had,” he said, likening the experience to spending time in the locker room with upperclassmen when he played high school football and baseball. “It’s like working with your older brothers all day.”
McMurry said the job is physically demanding, but he prefers it that way, noting he is a mixed martial arts fighter and boxer during his free time. His free time is spent training for fights, he said, adding that the training he does as a firefighter also helps in the ring.
While many departments in nation are experiencing high turnover and staffing shortages, McMurry said he has seen little of the turnover, noting he and everyone he works with are extremely passionate about their career field.
With half of the department being fairly young and most of the administration within retirement age within the next five years, Robinson said the department will have a shake up soon and is already seeing many of its more experienced firefighters retiring.
To further the strain, Robinson said the department had three firefighters out because of injuries for most of the year. The last of the three will return in October.
Staffing has become so tight, Robinson said, that his department plans vacation time for the year every November, allowing only three firefighters vacation time at any given moment to make sure there are enough individuals on each of the 30-person shifts.
The staffing issue caused excessive overtime when mixed with other factors, such as the addition of a “sprint truck” meant to respond to medical emergencies more quickly and free up fire engines. The ice storm earlier this year also caused some heartburn in the department’s salary funding.
“More firefighters would be a help,” Robinson said.
To help remedy this, the Tupelo City Council voted unanimously among present members during a special-called meeting on Tuesday to approve a $900,000 budget amendment that allotted $300,000 to the department.
Chief Financial Officer Kim Hanna said at the time the administration and department plan on tightening the belt on overtime in the upcoming fiscal year so there will be less expense where it can be helped.
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