BY MIKE REEVES
In today’s world of budgeting constraints, gone are the days of responding to a fire with excessive personnel. Though firefighting is still a labor-intensive job, today it is done with much concern about the number and size of firefighter crews used.
The fire service, as well as private enterprise, has invested large amounts of time and money in developing new equipment and tactics that will improve safety and efficiency on the fireground. An unfortunate side effect to this is that departments now are struggling with fewer firefighters on-scene. At the turn of the century, the response to a fire could have involved 50 to 100 firefighters in working pumps and bucket brigades. With the invention of steam pumps came an immediate reduction in the need for fire service personnel. Ever since, government officials have searched for advantages that will reduce large personnel pools.
The expense of maintaining an efficient and effective fire service has proven more and more burdensome for municipalities. Because of the growing need for funds in many other areas, some government officials have looked to the fire service as an easy area in which to justify a reduction of services. The fire service has developed a reputation for performing to an acceptable level regardless of the limitations imposed on it. With improved equipment, strategies, tactics, and codes, the frequency of fires has greatly decreased.
Residents are often reluctant to increase funding for the fire department, which often results in higher property taxes. Because of this fact and people’s tendency to believe that fires (and other tragic things) happen to others, it is difficult to obtain the public’s permission to maintain adequate fire department staffing.
It has become necessary for the fire service to adopt other reasons for existing. One of them is to deliver medical services, a practice that began in California in the 1960s. The fire service has since come to be recognized as the most sophisticated EMS delivery system in the world. The responses to EMS calls increase every year, yet misinformed city officials continue to cut personnel.
MANDATED STAFFING LEVELS
Although there are no government mandates requiring specific numbers of fire personnel for responses, there are requirements for delivering fire protection. This protection may be provided through a paid career service or volunteer organizations. There are also no requirements with regard to the number of fire stations that should serve a specified population or area.
The earliest recommended staffing levels were promulgated by organizations such as the Insurance Services Office and the National Board of Fire Underwriters, which viewed staffing primarily in terms of firefighting efficiency, not firefighter safety. These nationally recognized staffing standards called for a minimum of six-person engine companies and seven-person ladder companies. The 1987 edition of NFPA 1500, Standard on Fire Department Occupational Safety and Health Program, recommends in the nonmandatory appendix that a minimum acceptable fire company staffing level for responding to any type of fire should be four members on each engine and each ladder. Companies responding in high-risk areas should have a minimum acceptable staffing of six firefighters on ladder companies and five firefighters on engine companies.1
To try to stop this decimation of our fire service, several approaches have been proposed. One is national accreditation to develop a department efficient and effective in meeting national standards. Although the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, which sets and monitors the standards, does not set staffing levels, it sets requirements for the specific tasks performed at most fires. According to the Fire and Emergency Service Self-Assessment Manual, “Standards of response coverage [are] determining [that] a sufficient level of resources [is] needed to set up the equipment and simultaneously handle the task of [the] fire attack, search and rescue, ventilation, backup lines, pump operations, water supply, and command all within a few minutes. If fewer firefighters and equipment are available or if they have a longer distance to travel, the department will not be successful.”2
The commission stopped short of giving specific numbers of firefighters or defining the apparatus on which they were to ride, leaving these specifics to the localities. As far as the commission is concerned, it does not matter how the firefighters arrive, as long as they arrive in a timely manner. The staffing levels of America’s fire departments have decreased to the point where they are of concern to the fire service. To aid in improving fire department staffing, the fire service promoted the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants. Congress bought into the idea of the SAFER grant program in 2004 and approved its funding through the Department of Homeland Security budget. The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) applauded the effort. IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger noted, “Congress has taken an enormous stride forward in protecting all Americans.” No single federal program will have a greater impact on the health and safety of our members and the people we protect than SAFER.” 3 The purpose of the SAFER grant is to award grants directly to volunteer, combination, and career fire departments to help the departments increase their cadre of firefighters. Ultimately, the goal is for SAFER grantees to enhance their ability to attain 24-hour staffing and thus assuring their communities have adequate protection from fire and fire related hazards. The SAFER grants have two activities that will help grantees attain this goal: (1) hiring of firefighters and (2) recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters.4
This program was developed to help reduce the startup cost of hiring additional firefighters. The government support will decrease over four years; the localities will gradually increase their funding. In the fifth year of the program, the localities are to absorb the entire cost of the new hirees. This legislation is a start toward better staffing for many departments, but it is only a start. The problem lies in the funding of these positions after the grant runs out. The lack of funds available for firefighters’ salaries is the reason fire departments are understaffed today. This program could end up putting a financial burden on fire departments and localities.
LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS
In the past, the fire service has operated with little thought about legal consequences. It was immune from legal actions because of the concept of sovereign immunity, which was carried over from England’s legal system. It is based on the “doctrine of divine right, the belief that monarchs derived their right to rule directly from God and were accountable only to him. Therefore, it was sacrilegious to sue the king or the state, as the machinery representing the King.” The doctrine of divine right held that the King and the State possessed sovereign immunity from lawsuits.5 Consequently, few states, up until the first half of the 20th century, have allowed suits against themselves or their subdivisions without special permission from legislatures. “In the absence of a statute to the contrary, a municipal corporation is not liable to an individual for poor or negligent performance of a governmental duty.” (5)
For years municipalities and the fire service have relied on sovereign immunity as protection from the possibility of lawsuits related to their negligent acts. During the second half of the 20th century, however, the views pertaining to governmental agencies being held accountable for their acts began to change. This does not mean that suits against governmental agencies are freely awarded on a daily basis; however, more and more suits related to negligence or threat of negligence are being brought against these agencies, and a number of them have been won.
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for example, the IAFF and Pittsburgh Fire Fighters Local 1 challenged a financial control board in charge of rebuilding the city’s devastated economy. Although the contract offered to the firefighters “could have been devastating,” the Local’s members emerged with a guarantee of safe staffing levels. The City of Pittsburgh wanted to close nine firehouses, which would have placed many citizen and firefighter lives at extreme risk, according to the IAFF. “We were not about to let that happen,” says IAFF’s Schaitberger. “We engaged experts from the IAFF staff to work with Local 1 and were able to save firefighter positions, gain four-person staffing per company, and keep response times to less than four minutes. That’s big.” 6
In recent years, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has adopted a practice of investigating every firefighter death and serious injury. This was the case in 2000, when on October 25, it began an investigation into the injuries of four firefighters.
During the incident at a plastics recycling plant, the four firefighters were injured; one was hospitalized. After the investigation, NIOSH identified several problems, including the lack of staffing. In its final report, NIOSH said; “The investigation revealed the following problems during the fire: staffing shortages, communication problems, material shortages in the rehab area, procedural deficiencies, lack of a pre-incident plan, and lax observance and enforcement of self-contained breathing apparatus use.”7
Through investigations such as this one, it has become easier for complainants to prove fault. In situations where firefighters have documented their expression of concern about inadequate staffing’s affecting their job performance, liability becomes even easier to prove. According to Political and Legal Foundations of Fire Protection,
Since the late ’70s, a revolution of sorts has changed the legal environment in which the fire service (and other governmental organizations) works. As society has become more complex and litigation of all types has increased, more and more States have started to look at the inequities created by the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Individuals grievously injured due to no fault of their own often couldn’t recover legitimate damages because of this shield against accountability. Some States have renounced their immunity through legislative action, and others have done so through a series of activist court rulings. The State hereby waives its immunity from liability and action and hereby assumes liability and consent to have the same determined in accordance with the same rules of law applied in actions in the courts against individuals.” (5, CG9-9)
In view of this, staffing must be considered a liability issue. A department or locality can be held liable if it can be proven that the lack of sufficient staffing caused an accident. If the event occurred after the fire department requested increased staffing and presented documentation to justify the increase, there is a good chance that the lawsuit could be decided in the department’s favor.
The courts have used other NFPA standards, such as 1403, Standard on Live Fire Training Evolutions, and 1500 when deciding court cases, but 1710, Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments, and 1720, Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations and Special Operations to the Public by Volunteer Fire Departments, to my knowledge, still have not been cited as being equal to law in a court case.
The award of a suit to a complainant could then open the way for punitive damages. These types of awards often are in the millions of dollars to ensure that the agencies are punished for their failure to act as they should.
Although there are many ways to provide staffing at a fire scene, it is the responsibility of the locality or fire department to ensure staffing at safe levels. This can be accomplished through minimum staffing of apparatus, having extra apparatus respond, requesting mutual aid, or requesting aid from bystanders for exterior activities away from fire hazards.
Each of these options must be carefully thought through to ensure that the safest, most effective application of fire protection is available. Many departments play the averages and bet that the big event will not happen. This thought process saves money for the moment in the forms of reduced salaries and benefits; however, this could be a game of Russian roulette considering that there is also greater opportunity today for lawsuits against governmental agencies and possibly an award of millions of dollars against the fire department/municipality. Such an award could place a financial burden on the municipality/fire department that could take years to overcome. Being proactive on staffing is a more prudent course of action.
To provide the highest level of staffing possible while remaining fiscally responsible, evaluate each of the options mentioned above. While considering them, also explore programs such as a SAFER grant and the accreditation program, specifically the response standards section. A department could be held to these standards even if it is not actively involved in them. Although their provisions are not mandatory, you will be held accountable to them if legal action is brought against your department. The court turns to these and other standards when attempting to decide if your fire department acted in the proper manner.
Studies such as the one described below conducted by Providence, Rhode Island, can also be admitted as evidence during court proceedings. In this study, Providence compared 1989 staffing levels of three-firefighter companies with that of four-firefighter staffing in the 1990s. The study showed that with the increased staffing (four-person vs. three-person crews), the following occurred: “a 23.8 percent decrease in the number of reported injuries, a 25 percent decrease in the number of time-loss injuries (directly related to work injuries), a 71 percent decrease in [overall] work time lost, and a dramatic decrease in the frequency and severity of fire injuries.” 8
A properly researched and established staffing program will help to decrease firefighter injuries and deaths, which will in turn lessen the chance that legal action will be brought against the department. Funds that might be used to settle lawsuits could be applied to firefighter salaries and benefits.
Endnotes
1. J. Curtis Varone, “Providence Fire Department Staffing Study,” Executive Fire Officer Program, National Fire Academy, 1994.
2. Commission on Fire Accreditation International Assessment Manual, Fairfax, Va., Sec. 3, 27.
3. “Safer Funding Approved,” 2004, http://www.iaff.org/across/news/Archives2004/101904safer.html/.
4. Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grants. n.d. http://www.firegrantsupport.com/safer/.
5. Political and Legal Foundations of Fire Protection, National Fire Academy. 2000, CG 9-8.
6. “Pittsburgh Fire Fighters Win 1710 Staffing,” IAFF Syndicated News, March 21, 2005, http://www.iaff.org/across/news/Archive2005/032205pit.html/.
7. Hales T., T. Baldwin, HETA 2001-0043-2844 Madison (WI) Fire Department. 2001, 5, http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/hhe2001-0043-2844.html/.
8. Safe Fire Fighter Staffing Critical Considerations (Second Edition), International Association of Fire Fighters, 1995, International Standards Book Number 0-942920-20-1, 28.
MIKE REEVES is a captain on Engine 1 of the Lynchburg (VA) Fire & EMS and a member of the Division 3 Technical Rescue Team for the State of Virginia.
