Eastpointe

Eastpointe firefighters want SAFER grant

By Sara Kandel
C & G Staff Writer

» Click on image to view full size « Firefighters in Eastpointe work to put out a house fire in December. Members of the department say that in fire incidents like this, they need every man on shift just to maintain safety and control over the situation. Firefighters in Eastpointe work to put out a house fire in December. Members of the department say that in fire incidents like this, they need every man on shift just to maintain safety and control over the situation.

EASTPOINTE — When an Eastpointe woman came home from a weekend away to find her house filled with smoke and soot, there was no one available to help her.

She called 911, but the Eastpointe Fire Department was busy putting out a kitchen fire across town in the 21000 block of Raven, and there weren’t enough men on shift to break away.

Eventually, the St. Clair Shores Fire Department responded. They determined it had been a basement fire. The heat caused a pipe to burst, extinguishing the flames.

No one was injured in either Feb. 12 incident, but for firefighter Nick Sage, it was too close a call.

“We’re playing a very dangerous game of Russian roulette with the manpower we’re at right now,” Sage said. “It’s dangerous for the firefighters. It’s dangerous for the residents. And the incident on Sunday is the perfect example of why it’s so dangerous.”

The department’s overall manpower is down from 29 in 2008 to 21 now, making it the lowest staffed department per capita in Macomb County, according to Sage. And it’s an issue that has the firefighters playing the odds more often than they’d like.

“Just last night, we had four EMS calls within a one-hour period,” Sage said. “You’re talking about a shift of six. Two guys are out on the first ambulance run and two more on the second. You only have two guys left at the department. What happens if you get a fire call?”

Had there been a fire call, the city’s mutual aid agreement would have gone into effect, and an engine from Roseville or St. Clair Shores would have responded.

“That’s not what mutual aid is for though,” Sage said. “It isn’t to avoid staffing. It’s for getting help for those big situations.”

And some in the department are worried that Eastpointe will be ousted from the
mutual aid agreement with other communities if it’s constantly calling on its neighboring departments for help.

In 2010, Eastpointe, Roseville and the Shores terminated their mutual aid agreement with Harper Woods for similar reasons.

“The council’s message was clear: If Harper Woods didn’t want to properly staff its fire department so it could serve its residents and reciprocate aid to Eastpointe, then we wouldn’t send our crews to their city to supplement their neglect,” Sage said.

“If we can’t hold up our end of the partnership, they might not want to remain in partnership with us,” Sage said. “As firefighters, we genuinely care about the safety of the residents. We’re doing the best we can, but the problem is we just don’t have the manpower.”

Getting ‘SAFER’

The Fire Department had an idea for some help, and it pitched it to the city. They could apply for the federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response, or SAFER, grant, which would allow the department to increase its numbers.

If awarded the grant, the department would receive between $850,000 and $1 million, enough to cover the salary and benefits of four firefighters/paramedics for a two-year period.

However, the grant stipulates that the city cannot lay off any department employees during that two-year period.

For Eastpointe City Manager Steve Duchane, the future is just too uncertain to make a commitment like that.

“After much deliberation and discussion … I am unable to recommend use of this program at this time,” Duchane said.

With the five-year budget projecting the city’s fund balance to be approximately minus $1 million in 2014, if nothing happens to increase revenues, layoffs are a very real possibility.

Undeterred, Sage still thinks SAFER is the way to go. With it, he says, the Feb. 12 problem could have been avoided.

“If we were awarded the grant, we could have eight guys on a shift, and if we would have had eight guys on Sunday, we could have taken three of those guys, put them on a truck and sent them over there.”

Sage said the firefighters’ union was currently in negotiations with the city, but he maintained that it has nothing to do with the request for the city to pursue the SAFER grant.

“We are not looking to get into a pissing match with the city over this,” he said. “It’s not about firefighters being greedy about pay, benefits or excessive staffing levels. It’s about safety. They can at least apply for it, get awarded the money and then turn it down.”

“You can’t have any layoffs during the two years, but you can lose people through attrition, and there is at least two retirements that will happen in the next two years,” he added.

Duchane, who has a history in public safety, isn’t convinced, though. In an email, he said the Feb. 12 incident had more to do with a communication issue than a manpower problem. And while he says he can’t support the grant at this time, he maintains the importance of resident safety in every decision he makes.

“Our goal all the time is resident service — it’s the basis of all my decisions, and I have a track record to prove the taxpayer is (No. 1) in all my decisions, and it is pretty obvious that the one thing we will never compromise is our role in saving and protecting our women, men and children,” Duchane said in the email.

And without Duchane’s approval, there’s not much the department can do about it. The grant has to be submitted by a city administrator, and deadline for submission is Feb. 24.

Consolidation, privatization options

“We are unable to project our labor costs, as we do not have a settled contract. There is no ability to project enough funding to maintain current staffing for two years based on our budget projections, and we do not have an answer to as to what can be done with the grant-funded personnel if the department is merged, privatized EMS is put in place or a new employer assumes the personnel,” Duchane said.

The idea of a fire authority between Roseville and Eastpointe began surfacing at council meetings in both cities last summer. Administrators from both cities maintain they are still at the very preliminary stages of talks, but that it’s something residents could hear more about in the next couple of years. Both departments seem at least open to, if not outright supportive of, the concept.

“The consensus within the department is that a consolidation with Roseville would be a great thing,” Sage said. “To me, it just makes sense.”

However, creating such an authority would take a lot of work and a long time, and time is something the city doesn’t have much of, as it’s estimating that it will be dipping into its $12 million general fund by as much as $3 million in the 2012 fiscal year.

In the meantime, the city is looking into privatizing EMS, which would save in personnel costs and ambulance maintenance and replacement.

But Sage says privatizing EMS will only further increase the safety problem.

If Eastpointe privatizes its EMS service, it cancels out that part of the mutual aid agreement with St. Clair Shores and Roseville, according to Sage.

“The mutual aid agreements we enjoy with our neighbors is what makes it all work out,” Sage said. “How else can you get three or four ambulances within a one-hour window? Those spikes in run volume happen often, and no private EMS company can promise that kind of support. The possibility of a 30-minute wait for an ambulance and longer delays waiting for transport can mean life or death. We lose all our support in EMS if the city foolishly contracts private EMS.

“We all hear the horror stories coming out of Detroit about an ambulance taking an hour to arrive — if we privatize EMS, that could be Eastpointe.”

Duchane says the city is researching every avenue it can to provide the best service possible, and nothing is final yet.

“We are working hard around the clock to make the resources provide real-life (at-your-door) emergency services, and I am trying to find a legitimate way to raise money to do that,” he said via email.

As for the woman who suffered the basement fire and couldn’t get help from her home city’s fire service — Duchane said he talked to her.

“When I spoke to (her), you really get the sense of how it feels to open your door and the shock and fear of finding your home of many years filled with smoke, how gut-wrenching that was; that is what motivates me to make sure we do it right.”

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Sara Kandel at skandel@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1030.