"These Cuts Are Not Safe"

SAFETY FIRST: The firefighters' union and residents rallied against cuts that could close a Port Richmond fire company.
Photo By: ben hasty

Firefighters say looming service reductions will cost lives.

by Mike Newall

Jamika Clark awoke early last Saturday morning to a wall of smoke and flames. Her Kensington row house was on fire. "My kids," she screamed frantically. "My kids."

Clark grabbed her 2-year-old daughter, C.C., and dropped her from a second-story window to a neighbor. Unable to reach her other children, she stood at the window crying out for help until the fire was upon her. Neighbors say Clark's skin was "smoking" when she jumped to safety.

Seven fire engines and ladder trucks arrived on the scene within minutes and firefighters pulled the five remaining children from the burning house. Three were dead at the scene. Two survived and now lay in the hospital, along with their mother, in critical condition.

The blaze would've been deadlier, say officials from the firefighters union, Local 22, if the department's proposals to put eight fire companies out of service had already been implemented.

Under the proposed realignment, three of the first four engine and ladder companies to arrive at the fire would have been responding from greater distances. They would've likely arrived between 2 and 4 minutes later than they did, said union Vice President William Gault. Gault and other firemen interviewed for this story said that would have been a deadly delay in time since a fire doubles in size every minute.

"Instead of having pulled them two kids out," said Gault, "we'd have been taking pictures of their dead bodies."

The fire closings are the result of a $6.9 million budget cut imposed on the department last year by Mayor Street. They have led to heaps of outcry — in the form of numerous save-our-firehouse rallies — from citizens angry at the loss of their fire protection. Both Street and Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers, a political appointee, defend the closings as departmental "right-sizing," given that structure fires are down and medical emergencies are through the roof. Under the proposal, eight new ambulances will be added to the department's EMS service [Cover story, "Emergency Breakdown," Mike Newall, May 12, 2005].

"It is a plan that meets national standards," said Ayers during a recent interview, "and protects the people of Philadelphia."

While Local 22 welcomes the new ambulances, it has bitterly fought the company closings in a six-month arbitration process now nearing an end. Last month, an arbitrator ruled the department could redeploy its resources without the union's consent, and the closures are expected to occur sometime this summer. The union and industry experts contend the cuts will severely compromise the safety of the public and firefighters who will respond to fires that have more time to burn and grow.

"These cuts are not safe," said Lori Moore, assistant to the president of the Washington, D.C.-based International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), who testified on the union's behalf during the arbitration hearings. "The department didn't do nearly enough of a front-end investigation here. They seem to be going by trial and error and you don't gamble with people's lives that way."

Indeed, even a cursory review of the closings begs the question of whether the city is rolling the dice with its fire safety.

"A lot of people would be shocked," said one veteran fire lieutenant, "if they knew how little fire protection they [would] have once these cuts go through."

Fire officials began working on a realignment plan when former Fire Commissioner Harold Hairston was notified in the winter of 2003 that the department would be hit with a funding cut. According to the arbitration testimony of Deputy Fire Commissioner John McGrath, a handful of the department's top brass, including Ayers, who was then second in command, began reviewing call volume, response times and the geographical boundaries and makeup of every fire company.

"We probably spent anywhere between 10 to 15 hours of our week doing planning from January to March," said McGrath.

The department did not involve union leadership in the planning process and after a five-month investigation, department brass decided the removal of the eight engines and ladders would have the least impact on the response times of the overall system.

During their initial investigation, however, the department did not utilize computer analysis programs that many other cities have used when reorganizing their fire services. The department did not conduct road tests to ensure that response times would not suffer.

According to McGrath, the department relied on "rough estimates" of response times based on "as-the-crow-flies" projections. When the department did eventually conduct road tests — two months after the plan had been presented to the public — they used SUVs and not fire engines, leading the union to question the accuracy of the tests.

The department concluded the response time increase would be "a matter of seconds," as Ayers said during the arbitration hearings. (The department's current average response time of 4 and half minutes is 30 seconds more than the national standard.)

"We relied on the expertise of our top firefighters, who collectively represent over 100 years of fire service in the city of Philadelphia," said Street spokeswoman Deborah Bolling. "Their judgment met our standards."

"Anyone who says that we did not do a complete study," said Ayers, "is just somebody who doesn't want the companies to close."

After the plan became public last June, City Council offered the department $200,000 to pay for a more detailed and independent review of Fire Department resources. The administration refused to cooperate and the review was abandoned.

"It would have been costly and time-consuming and a lot of work for the administration and the department," said Bolling. "We preferred to rely on the consensus of our firefighting staff."

The union offered the department the services of its GIS computer-analysis equipment, to help better assess where resources could be cut back. The department refused and contracted a consulting firm to conduct a limited review of their own findings on response times.

"We found that the effect on response times would not be significant," said Phil Kouwe, of Emergency Services Consulting. "But we're not suggesting that we conducted a full standards-of-coverage study. We were asked to do a relatively refined study and that's what we did."

The department has yet to provide the results of its study to the union, said Gault.

"The city used some very out-of-date methods in deciding the closings," said Moore. "They did not go nearly deep enough in their analysis to make the cuts they did."

The IAFF conducted its own study, said Moore, and disagreed with many of the department's findings on response times.

"We found they were off in their calculations," she adds, "in some places [by] a minute and other places 2 and half a minutes."

The bulk of the fire closings and realignments will take place in the city's First Council District: Oregon Avenue to Spring Garden Street, Broad Street to the Delaware River, and portions of the lower Northeast riverwards. Eleven of the 15 affected fire companies are in this district, which seems counterintuitive since the area is currently experiencing the largest population and development boom of any portion of the city.

First District Councilman Frank DiCicco did not support the mayor in the last election and has publicaly questioned whether politics played a role in the cuts.

"How much of it is politics?" asked DiCicco. "Who knows? But I hope that's not the case. I wouldn't want that on my conscience, a tragedy occurring because of wanting to pay someone back politically."

Bolling dismissed the notion that politics figured into the cuts as a "trifle."

Ayers said the cuts focused on the First District only because that's where there was an abundance of resources. That will no longer be the case.

Center City will have nearly half of its fire companies removed, forcing the department to pull companies from surrounding neighborhoods in order to meet its own requirements for high-rise fires. There will no longer be a ladder truck located east of Broad Street in Center City.

And Old City will have both its fire engine and ladder truck removed. In December, a fire ignited in the historical landmark Christ Church located at Second and Market streets. Fire engines from Fourth and Arch streets responded within minutes. If a fire occurs in the same location after the cuts are implemented, first responder fire engines will be traveling from as far as Fifth and Girard streets or 22nd and Market streets.

"The entire historical district is going to be left barren of fire protection," said firefighter Tim McShea, chairman of the trustees for Local 22. "Them old houses are made up of wood and sticks. They go up like tinderboxes. You're going to lose property and life down there. This whole plan makes no sense. No sense at all."