Fire Chief Mullican presented the Kodiak Fire Department’s annual report to the city council at a regular work session, Tuesday. Although Mullican praised his staff and illustrated the department’s prowess with statistics collected over the past year, he also noted a number of ongoing issues, including difficulties with attracting new firefighters to the island and the unstable condition of the fire station.
“As all of you know, we’ve been dealing with personnel shortages over the past year-plus,” said Mullican, who went on to explain the dept has been understaffed since May, 2017. “We’ve been doing 48-hours-on/48-hours-off, to cover the personnel shortage.”