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Fire district to hire full-time firefighters

By Meg Olson

Point Roberts fire commissioners gave the go-ahead to replace division chief Mike Cadden with two career firefighters, after deciding that manning the quick response vehicle, car 510, around the clock was too much for one person and it was too much to expect volunteers to keep taking up the slack.

“I think it’s unreasonable to make one person your chief administrator and a 24-hour firefighter,” said North Whatcom Fire and Rescue Services (NWFRS) chief Mike Campbell at the July 11 fire district 5 meeting. “You also can’t bully and push around volunteers to fill the gap.”

Cadden announced his intention to resign and return to Yakima last month, saying that full responsibility for manning car 510 all day, every day was too much pressure. Volunteers, he said, couldn’t be expected to fill in whenever they were asked, and couldn’t be disciplined when they didn’t do it.

“Car 510 was not staffed for three hours,” Cadden said, after the volunteer who had taken the shift when Cadden was out of town went to Seattle unexpectedly. “Maybe he could have found somebody to take it, but he didn’t. He parked it and left,” Cadden said.

“That’s not acceptable,” commissioner John Fisher said. “You aren’t relieved of duty until you hand it over.”

“What part of volunteer don’t you understand?” Campbell asked. “If you ask them to do something they can say no, and if you discipline them for saying no you’ve crossed the line into employee. The only way to make them really accountable is to pay them.”

The quick response vehicle, has been the department’s answer to community calls for fast response times, especially in medical emergencies and Campbell said it’s working. “If you have someone local ready and with a pager it cuts down time and saves people,” he said. “In critical cases the car was there on time.”

In June the car responded to 11 calls, averaging a 5.33-minute response. The unit responded to all the calls in under the ten-minute standard set by the department for fires. Of the five aid calls, the unit made the four-minute medical emergency standard twice, and missed it by a minute in two others. It took eight minutes to respond to a 5 a.m. aid call, which Campbell said was understandable when the firefighter needed to wake up and get dressed.

In a June house fire on Evergreen, the quick response vehicle was there in four minutes. Because volunteer firefighters were already out for a drill, they were there in a few more minutes, but Campbell said that was closer to ideal than average. “If it hadn’t been drill night it would have been at least 15 minutes without car 510, and a fire doubles in size every 15 minutes.”
Since car 510 hit the road, first Campbell and then Cadden have had the primary responsibility for making sure it is manned around the clock, taking most of the shifts themselves. On their days off, sick days, or days they were out of town for training or other administrative business, volunteers have taken over.

“Nick Kiniski is a volunteer. He’s running his own business but he’s also on the job full-time for us,” Campbell said. A full-time employee working eight hour days worked 176 hours in June. A professional firefighter usually works eight 24-hour shifts a month, or 220 hours, Campbell said. In June, Cadden was on duty 316 hours. Kiniski was on duty 239.

“If you work them too much they won’t stay,” Campbell said of professional firefighters like Cadden. “If you ask volunteers to do too much they’ll stop. We have pushed it for two years. Now, it’s coming to the breaking point and we need to adjust. Our strategic plan promises consistency and reliability and we said it would take a non-traditional program to deliver.”

Campbell proposed two possible solutions – a volunteer sleeper program or additional professional staff.

Campbell said sleeper programs in Birch Bay and Lynden work because of very large volunteer bases – 80 and 90 volunteers. A pair of volunteers covering nights and weekends adds up to 100 12-hour shifts a month.
“With this pool of volunteers you can’t reliably fill those shifts,” Campbell said. The Point Roberts fire department has 30 volunteers today.

The other option would be to hire two firefighters who would be part of the NWFRS pool and assigned to cover Point Roberts, 12 hours a day, three days a week each. Working a 40-hour week, each of them would also train four hours a week with volunteers. “This would reduce the load on volunteers to 96 hours a week,” Campbell said.

A disadvantage of using firefighters from the NWFRS bargaining unit would be, under labor rules, residency in Point Roberts cannot be required.
Advantages include always having replacements available if they take time off, get sick or quit. Firefighters are also available now, with several Point Roberts volunteers on the hiring list.

“It seems a cleaner way to address a multitude of issues without getting into politics,” commissioner Jesse Lofquist said.

Campbell said the biggest advantage to having more hours covered by career firefighters was that they could be disciplined and held accountable. ”I’m trying to address three problems: leadership, consistency and accountability,” he said.

More staff costs more money, but Campbell said he was confident other income sources, such as a lease with the proposed Wellness Clinic in the firehall and proceeds from a proposed countywide EMS levy would generate the additional $39,000 a year.

“If the EMS levy passes we could even put in a third career person,” commissioner Don Frantz said. Campbell said the one percent increase in property tax the district is allowed for next year would not cover the cost of additional staff.

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