Hate to say “I told you so,” but…
Without explanation, and contrary to the hallowed Management Partners “study,” Fire Manager Tim Gregg has decided to remove Lancaster City’s Ladder Truck 1 from service permanently.
This decision, coupled with the ongoing policy to brown out Engine 1 leaves only three firefighting apparatus in service in Lancaster City.
According to Lancaster County’s Emergency Management Agency, Truck 1, which has been based out of Fire Station 3 on East King Street, is the busiest Truck company in the county. Raw numbers aside, Truck 1 is the city’s only truly functional ladder truck. This is a key factor for several reasons.
1) Truck 1 is considerably smaller than the city’s other ladder truck, Truck 2, operating out of station 1. Truck 2 is more than 10′ longer, and almost 3′ wider than Truck 1. This considerable size difference is significant when considering the narrow streets and tight turns in the city. The truth of the matter is that Truck 2 simply cannot travel down many of the city’s streets.
2) When deployed for ladder operations, Truck 1’s stabilizing outriggers take up less space than Truck 2. Even if the larger apparatus were able to travel down a narrow street, it is very likely that it would not be able to deploy the necessary stabilizing outriggers to safely operate the ladder, making it nothing more than a giant taxi for two firefighters.
3) With Truck 1 out of service, the only fire apparatus immediately available to respond to calls on the city’s east side is Engine 3. Engine 3 carries 1 28′ extension ladder and 1 16′ roof ladder. Engine
3 has no capacity to reach windows or roofs higher than 2 stories. Many, many homes and businesses on the east side of town are three stories.
Gregg has offered no reasoning behind the elimination of Truck 1. We are only left to speculate about his reasoning. Eliminating the apparatus will not improve safety, increase manpower or provide for
faster response times. In fact, this move will have a detrimental effect on manpower, safety and response times.
The Management Partners study, held by Gregg and Rick Gray as a panacea to the city’s financial woes, at least in respect to fire operations, specifically stated that no reductions in fire stations, or fire apparatus should take place. For as much as I disagree with other aspects of their report, the Management Partners crew went out of their way to recognize that Lancaster needs a minimum number of fire apparatus available to provide adequate fire services.
Eliminating Truck 1 is unsafe in many ways. The city is now unbalanced in terms of fire apparatus. With only one apparatus available to respond on the east side, response times will be considerably longer
for firefighters from the West King or Prospect Street stations.
Gregg’s move does nothing to increase manpower. Instead, it reduces manpower from the east side of town by half.
Granted, the city might save a few thousand dollars a year in fuel and maintenance; however that cost savings will likely be negligible, as other apparatus will now have to operate more frequently to cover Truck 1’s calls, which numbered at 1,075 last year, not including school drills, inspections, and other non emergency functions.
This is a bad deal for the city. It is unfortunate that Gray, Gregg and their allies at Lancaster Newspapers are attempting to enact this major change in fire protection policy in silence. For the reasons stated above, it is clear that there is absolutely no benefit to this change, which leaves only one answer to the question of Gregg’s motivations. Unfortunately that answer is the same as it has been for many of Gregg’s policy decisions; presenting the appearance of doing something positive, while screwing the firefighters (and unfortunately city residents) in every way possible.
Gregg’s move is a good one and welcomed by the taxpayers of the City of Lancaster. There is no other department in the city that has consumed, unnecessarily, so much of the city’s resources.
We call on the press to get and publish the salary and benefit packages of all the city firefighters. As the firefighters know, the citizens will be outraged at what this goup of mostly high school only educated employees is making.
On top of this, the majority of their time is spent sitting around watching TV and engaging in activities unrelated to public safety. The current city model for firefighting does not work, it is too expensive and will be changing.
The good thing for most of the firefighters is that their easy schedules allow them to run outside businesses. Many of them will be needing those businesses to support themselves and their families after the rationalization of the department is concluded.
Oh please. The tea party circus act no longer sells tickets, so get back in the clown car. Gregg’s move is an act of cowardice and avarice in an attempt to manipulate the firefighter’s contract negotiations, nothing more. Any taxpayer that welcomes the elimination of the most capable fire apparatus in the city is a fool.
For years Gray and Gregg have hidden behind the Management Partners report as being the “one true way” to operate the fire department. Unfortunately that report directly contradicts the administration’s move here. The Management Partners report specifically cautions the city not to eliminate fire stations or fire apparatus.
To quote the report:
“Recommendation 170: Maintain the current fire suppression strength of five on-duty companies.”
It’s that simple. Either Management Partners is the way to fix the city, as Gray and Gregg continually claim, or it isn’t. It is neither appropriate or ethical to cherry pick aspects of that report in order to meet the administration’s goal of ravaging the fire department.
The salary and benefits packages of the city’s firefighters are publicly available and have been frequently published by the press. In fact, they too are included in the Management Partners report. The cost of a firefighter in the city is less than the cost of a cop, of which there are now more than four times as many. You might want to try to make hay about it, but there’s no issue there.
Compared to every other city in Pennsylvania, Lancaster firefighters make less in both salary and benefits, while performing the same tasks with fewer resources.
I call on you to ride along with one of the city fire units. You’re a big talker here, but I know for a fact that you don’t have the integrity to get out from behind your keyboard to actually find out what reality is in a city fire station.
I’ve said from the beginning of Timmy Gregg’s dog and pony show that he would eliminate as many firefighters and fire apparatus as possible. I’ve also said it would take a firefighter or civilian being killed for the city to realize that Gregg’s agenda is dangerous. The former has certainly come to pass, and will continue to occur. Let’s hope we never have to deal with the fallout from the latter.
Acutally, I have been in several of the city fire stations and have first hand knowledge of the gravy train that being a Lancaster City fireman is. Yes, actually responding to a fire is a potentially dangerous job, but as much as you’d like the public to think otherwise, there are very few serious injuries.
If the job is too dangerous or stressful for you, which is appears to be as you seem perilously close to the edge, we’d encourage you to find other employment. There is no one holding a gun to your head and forcing you to stay.
Bull. What’s your name? All visitors are signed in, and a record certainly exists if your claims are true. Unless you are Timmy Gregg himself, which is a distinct possibility, I’d caution you to avoid making claims that you can’t substantiate.
As for “serious injuries” you should review the records of time lost injuries sustained by firefighters in the line of duty in the past year. There have been times when 4 or 5 firefighters have been off duty for an extended period of time because of injuries incurred on the job. Get your facts straight.
All of your obfuscation and you still haven’t addressed the hypocrisy of Gray and Gregg. I quoted the report that cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars and explicitly stated that fire apparatus should not be reduced.
EXPLAIN WHY the M.P. report can be enshrined by the administration as the “blueprint” when it suits their narrative, but completely ignored when it doesn’t. Until you start addressing the issues you’re nothing but a shill for failed politicians or the politician’s lacky himself.
Man up and have a real conversation about the real issues or shut up and stamp your feet in the corner.
Firefighters on duty are an insurance policy. We all know that it is ridiculous to not carry adequate insurance on our homes and automobiles. We spend hundreds of dollars on insurance year after year after year from which we receive no benefit – until disaster strikes.
How many of us could afford to rebuild our homes if they were severely damaged or destroyed? How many of us could afford to repair or replace our automobiles if they were seriously damaged, especially while still making payments? And how many of us could afford to defend ourselves against a lawsuit brought on ourselves by a momentary lapse in judgment?
Firefighting in a city presents life-threatening challenges unlike anywhere else. Most residences are older multi-story row homes, many now cut up into multiple apartments. Few row homes were built with fire safety in mind; most lack firewalls, and often share common lofts.
The current staffing of the Lancaster City Bureau of Fire is adequate for one first-alarm response. That’s all, folks. One working fire would quickly consume all of Lancaster City’s on-duty firefighting resources. What happens when there is a second call (which does happen)?
Current plans call for off-duty firefighters to be called in. But off-duty firefighters do have a life, and they are not being paid for being on-call 24/7. Even if they were at home waiting for a call, there would be a delay until reserve apparatus could be manned and respond; in this time, a fire could easily spread into adjoining structures – or someone could die who might have been rescued had an on-duty unit been available to respond.
An alternative is to ask suburban volunteer fire companies to respond inside Lancaster City. Volunteer firefighters as a whole are true professionals, spending their own time and money to increase their skills and knowledge. But the vast majority of suburban volunteers have little or no experience with century-old multi-story row house construction; even though most would willingly risk their lives to save trapped victims, they might not be prepared to deal with all of the intricacies and nuances of preventing a row house fire from quickly taking out an entire block of homes.
And calling volunteers from home or work to a fire station well outside the city limits would result in even longer response times, further putting lives and property at risk. Besides, how would suburban taxpayers feel about their resources routinely being used in the city, limiting their own access to fire protection?
So far, Lancaster City has been extremely lucky. We have been gambling with an understaffed fire department for far too long. Just like in any kind of gambling, sooner rather than later our luck will run out. When it does, someone is going to die needlessly; it’s only a matter of time. What price is a person’s life really worth?
How will a grieving family member ever be consoled by knowing that their loved one lost their life because the cost of an adequately-staffed fire department was considered to be too expensive?
And sadly, Lancaster City only inspects non-owner occupied properties for smoke detectors, leaving roughly half the city properties potentially without adequate warning systems.
That’s because firefighters are the ones that inspect properties for smoke detectors, and there aren’t enough on duty to perform all of their other assigned tasks AND respond to emergencies. If Lancaster City had a fully-staffed fire department, they would be able to inspect private residences for smoke detectors just like they used to.