On January 26th 2009, the Alameda Fire Department will no longer provide enough on-duty firefighters and paramedics to work on all of the city’s fire apparatus and ambulances.  Whenever firefighters are off(due to earned leave, injury/illness or training) and overtime is needed, the department will simply place a fire truck or ambulance out of service, depending on how many people are off that day.  How often will this occur?  Nearly daily!

The current near-daily use of overtime is caused by the following factors:

9 frozen/unfunded positions

5 long-term injuries

3 budgeted, yet unfilled vacancies

You may have seen on local blogs and newspapers that earned leave (vacation) and sick leave are the primary cause, but please understand this is just a small part.  The Fire Department had originally attempted to implement this “brown-out” of a fire company July 1st 2008.  Due, in part, to public outcry, the City was able to partially fund the overtime budget and delay the “brown-out” until now.  If the “brown-out” policy had been in place July 1st, a closure of a fire company or ambulance would have occured on all but six days(September 7,9, December 10,15,17, January 7).  This means that on 188 out of the last 194 days (through January 10, 2009), the Fire Department would have had a company out of service.  All recent Alameda Fire Department deployment studies (completed by outside organizations) indicate the minimum safe level of deployent is 27 firefighters staffing five fire engines, two ladder trucks and three ambulances.  Any less dramatically hinders the ability of the firefighters to operate safely and efficiently.  One report from City Gate, completed in September 2004 * at a cost of $50,000 to the tax payers) indicated this when the annual call volume was at 5,704.  Since then, the call volume has hovered at or near 6,000 for the last three years.  Another deployment study completed in July 2008 by the IAFF indicates the need for 34 on-duty firefighters.  The Alameda Fire Department needs all of it’s 111 sworn positions filled.  A bare minimum of 27 on-duty firefighter at the stations are needed to keep the citizens, visitors and firefighters free of harm.

Please call the City manager or City Council members and urge them to reverse their decision.  Their contact information can be found online at www.savealamedafirehouses.com

Alameda Firefighter Association