By Craig Fox
Watertown Daily Times
WATERTOWN, N.Y. — Of the nearly 4,000 total calls that the city’s fire department was called out to last year, its rescue squad was sent out 2,536 times, or about 63 percent of the time, for such minor incidents as someone falling onto a sidewalk to serious accidents and violent crimes with injuries.
The Times examined three days’ worth of emergency calls that the fire department handled recently.
The research found that most of the 36 calls during a three-day period May 17 through 19 were not serious. For two-thirds of the calls, the fire department’s heavy rescue truck was accompanied by Guilfoyle Ambulance Service, a private company that serves the city and Jefferson County.
The calls included such things as 14 diabetic and breathing problems, two structure fires, a couple of falls and two traumatic injuries. The rescue truck also went on calls involving someone choking, an overdose and reports of a pregnancy/birth and a person fainting.
But critics accuse the fire department of sending staff and vehicles out on the least serious medical calls as a way to keep response calls up and staffing levels at 78 members. Critics also wonder about the need to send the rescue truck when Guilfoyle also is dispatched to the call.
In defending the use of the heavy rescue truck so often, Deputy Chief Russell J. Randall said firefighters enter the career because they want to help people.
“You’re the fire department,” he said. “You’re supposed to help. You go because you’re expected to do your job.”
Staffed by two EMTs, the department’s 2004 American LaFrance heavy rescue truck covers the entire city from the department’s central fire station on South Massey Street. The response time for EMS calls averaged a little more than six minutes in 2013, according to a recent study conducted by a consultant that looked at the fire department’s staffing levels and efficiency.
The study, conducted by the International City/County Management Association, recommends the fire department should consider cross-staffing the rescue and ladder trucks with a single crew of three, so they can do both jobs.
Calls initially come into the Jefferson County 911 dispatch system at the Metro-Jefferson Public Safety Building. Dispatchers immediately contact both the city fire department and Guilfoyle for the medical emergencies. Almost always, both agencies are dispatched. The fire department is often there first, Fire Chief Dale C. Herman said.
City Council members contend that sending out the rescue truck so often will end up costing too much money, claiming it creates wear and tear on the vehicle and it will break down.
Councilwoman Teresa R. Macaluso, a former nurse, is not convinced the fire department needs to send out the rescue squad if Guilfoyle is going anyway, since the rescue truck cannot transport patients. It irked her to hear that so many of the calls in that three-day period involved diabetic and breathing issues.
“It’s 14 times you don’t need to go,” she said, adding that she does not have an issue when the rescue truck joins a fire engine at the scene of a car accident, but feels differently when it is merely a medical call. “It looks like a little overkill to me.”
But Chief Herman said a minor incident, such as a bee sting, could quickly become something much more serious, so it’s a good idea to send the two EMTs there. He pointed out that a call came in May 18 for a property damage accident, but a police officer at the scene noticed a backseat passenger was having some cardiac problems. The rescue squad was quickly dispatched, he said.
In a May 18 pregnancy/birth incident, both the fire department and Guilfoyle responded. The two city EMTs took the woman’s vital signs before the ambulance arrived and helped her into the ambulance, Deputy Chief Randall said. The entire call took 20 minutes.
Calling it “just a snapshot,” Deputy Chief Randall said that was just once instance, and he remembered one call when he personally had to cut the umbilical cord after a woman gave birth in her home.
County 911 dispatchers also use a complicated set of protocols for different kinds of medical emergencies so they can decide if the city apparatus should go on a call, Chief Herman said. Asked why the city did not go on two incidents involving people having psychiatric problems, he said dispatchers determined what to do by looking at the seriousness of it. If the person is about to harm himself or someone else, the city truck is sent, Chief Herman said.
As for the complaint the department often gets about going out on calls for falls, Deputy Chief Randall recalled an incident involving a woman injured several years ago in her home when she fell into a cardboard box and could not get herself out again. In that position for 12 hours, she suffered circulation problems and was taken to Samaritan Medical Center. She died a day later.
“Falls can be serious,” he said.
While he understands all of those issues, Councilman Stephen A. Jennings questioned the size of the vehicle used in the medical calls. He likes the consultant’s recommendation of using lighter vehicles that can be dispatched more easily from all three fire department stations. That strategy would save money on fuel and wear and tear, he said.
“I don’t have an issue with the equipment,” he said. “We just need to be more effective and more efficient.”
But fire department officials countered that the city would have to purchase those vehicles and the system would not be as efficient.
And the city did not have to purchase the heavy rescue truck, now with more than 53,000 miles and 7,900 engine hours, 11 years ago. The city arranged “a settlement agreement” with American LaFrance after the previous vehicle had so many mechanical problems, Deputy Chief Randall said. The now-defunct South Carolina company offered the current vehicle in exchange for the old, he recalled.
“They told us we could take it or leave it,” he said.
The debate comes at a time when the city soon will resume negotiations with the Watertown Professional Fire Fighters Association Local 191. City Manager Sharon A. Addison contends she can negotiate cuts in the fire department staff by reducing the department’s less serious emergency calls.
Council members say the city needs to find ways to save money in the fire department’s $9 million budget.
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©2015 Watertown Daily Times (Watertown, N.Y.)