By Peter Hegarty
Contra Costa Times
ALAMEDA — The day after a despondent man walked into the water off Robert Crown Memorial State Beach in an apparent attempt to take his own life, firefighters said budget cuts within the department were partly to blame for his death.
Additional training and reviving a shuttered water rescue program, firefighters said, would have helped save Raymond Zack.
On Tuesday, the City Council will review the incident and ask for details about the protocols that responders cited for remaining on the beach.
“People are assuming that those protocols were city-adopted. They were not,” City Councilwoman Beverly Johnson said Friday. “They are internal fire department protocols that I am not sure anyone in the city even knew existed.”
Johnson is looking at whether discontinuing the department’s water rescue program in 2009 was meant to be temporary while the department underwent water rescue recertification.
“I understand that it may have supposed to have been stopped for just 30 to 45 days,” she said. “And that someone may have dropped the ball, that the recertification did not take place and there wasn’t a follow-up. That’s something we need to find out.”
The firefighters’ claim that more training and a rescue program might have prevented Zack’s death also follows recent turmoil within the department over budget and contract issues.
Former Chief Dave Kapler resigned in November following allegations by firefighters that he used city gas to fuel his personal vehicle. Kapler filed a $2 million lawsuit against the city of Alameda in April, saying city officials forced him out on behalf of the Alameda firefighters union 689, which he claims opposed him for his tough stance during contract talks.
The department also closed a fire station two years ago to save money, which firefighters say puts residents at risk. The firefighters have been working on an initiative for the November ballot to increase staffing.
A union representative declined to comment on the Memorial Day drowning.
But some Alameda emergency responders who asked not to be named said Zack’s death must be viewed within the context of the ongoing turmoil, and a sense of failure in leadership. Interim fire Chief Mike D’Orazi — who started the job a week before Zack died and has strong union support — called the drowning “very regrettable.”
He told the council the day after Zack’s death that budget constraints led to the loss of the department’s water rescue ability. “We just did not have the money available to do what we would like to do,” he said.
After Zack’s death, D’Orazi said he made an immediate policy change that would allow a senior firefighter at an emergency scene discretion on whether to carry out a water rescue. He also said he aims to have 16 firefighters certified soon as rescue swimmers. It is expected to cost $20,000, which will come out of the department’s current budget.
Meanwhile, Mayor Marie Gilmore has pledged that she will carry out a transparent investigation into what occurred on the beach that fateful day.
“Our focus has to be how to prevent this from happening again,” Gilmore said.
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