The Prescott Fire Department is operating on the slimmest of manpower margins, and it’s relying on firefighters to volunteers to work overtime in order to keep fire stations from being shut down entirely for a day.
When the problem first began to become evident at the end of last year, Fire Chief Dennis Light put into place a plan to “brown out” fire stations. That means that when there are only two firefighters available to work a given station’s 24-hour shift, the department takes the big fire engine out of service and assigns the two remaining personnel to make medical runs in a rescue truck—a large, well-equipped pickup truck.
To this point, the rescue has served its purpose.
“Are two personnel that can respond rapidly in a rescue truck better than three personnel coming from a greater distance? The answer has to be ‘yes,’” Division Chief Don Devendorf said. “However, when you need a fire truck, only a fire truck will do.” The department has been lucky, so far, he said: there hasn’t yet been a structure fire that required a fire engine in the area of a browned-out station.
The department is now short eight firefighters. That’s because there are six vacant positions (three that have been unfilled due to a hiring freeze, plus three more created by people who left in recent weeks) and two more men out for an extended period with injuries.
“So, for the immediate future, we are completely dependent on multiple people volunteering to work overtime (for pay) on any given day in order to staff even a rescue truck,” Devendorf said, and the situation will become worse before it gets better, because summer vacation time is coming up, which will lead to station shift closures, or blackouts.