by Brian A. McDonald

Since Aug. 12, city firefighters have managed five multi-alarm fires, all without the help of one of their engines.

“Engine 4 was assigned out of service on July 1, 2003,” said Chief Kevin W. Kelleher.

It’s currently sitting idle in its garage on the corner of Lowell St. and Somerville Ave. due to manpower constraints, he said.

Kelleher said he would need the services of 16 additional firefighters to get Engine 4 up and running full time. “Sixteen firefighters. That’s $800,000.00 per year.”

Kelleher said he has watched the number of firefighters employed by the city of Somerville drop. “In 1977, when I started, Somerville Fire employed 244 people,” he said.

“When I became chief in 1997, we had 160 people,” he said.

“Today we have 138,” he said.

“Cambridge, with a population of between 94 and 95 thousand, employs 280 firefighters,” he said. “Their fire department is flourishing.”

Meanwhile, Somerville, at one point the most densely populated city in the country whose 78,000 inhabitants live in predominantly tightly packed wooden structures, is losing firefighters every year, he said.

For example, in 2003 Kelleher said he had to lay off ten firefighters. The prior year the fire department lost 13 to retirement. In 2003, the city then offered an early retirement incentive to all of its employees to help control personnel costs. Eight firefighters took the incentive.

Although, Kelleher said he had the opportunity to rehire his 10 layoffs, the net loss was 11 firefighters in two years.

The fire chief said he understands that budget constraints have forced city management to make tough decisions about spending. “It’s all about risk management.”

“For example, you can graph out police activity and locate the hot spots – hot nights and there’s more drinking in the parks, September and the students return, Friday and Saturday nights are busy – you can’t do that with fire reports,” he said.

“If you take fire incidences and map them out over time they happen all over the place,” he said.

The random nature of fires makes studying them in terms of risk management formulae difficult, he said.

“You have to be fully prepared all the time because you never know,” he said.

“We can plan for special events, like the DNC, or the fourth of July and we bring on extra overtime staff and have Engine 4 running,” he said.

“The mayor has been very responsive in that regard,” the fire chief said.

“We also have Engine 4 staffed with overtime firefighters in the event of a snowstorm,” he said.

“We can plan for that. When a snowstorm is coming, we realize our trucks our going to be moving slow, so we have to have everything available,” he said. Which means staffing Engine 4 with overtime firefighters, he said.

“The mayor has been very good about that, too,” he said.

“This isn’t about the machine, though. What having Engine 4 out of service means is that at any time other than planned for events like the DNC or a snowstorm, we’re short three firefighters on the ground,” he said.

The battle for dollars is a constant battle and one that the fire department has been losing, he said. “We’re in competition with the rest of the city for city dollars.”

It’s a situation that isn’t helped by the low profile of the department, he said. “Most people don’t ever see the fire department. But I’ll bet if you asked any one of those people we saved with a defibrillator he’d say we are the greatest.”

While city funding is drying up, legislators in Washington are working to provide resources for local fire departments around the country. The Office of Homeland Security has sponsored a bill worth close to $750 million dollars to subsidize local fire departments.

Kelleher said that the fund, the Assistance to Firefighters Grant, would be of no immediate help to the city, however, as it only covers the costs of equipment and training, not personnel, Somerville’s shortfall.
“We need $800 thousand dollars for personnel. That grant doesn’t cover it.”

In direct response to the need for personnel subsidies, the federal government introduced the SAFER Act in 2003. The Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Act of 2003 authorizes the United States Fire Administration to award $7.6 billion in grants over seven years to local U.S. fire departments. The grants are designed to allow financially strapped fire departments hire needed personnel at $100,000 per year, per fire fighter.

The program requires that cities gradually take on paying the fighters over four years at a rate of 10% the first year, 20% the second year, 50% the third year, 70% the fourth year and 100% thereafter.

“That would be a great short term benefit to the city,” Kelleher said. “It would allow us to hire immediately and then plan for the future when, hopefully, we have more money.”

The Act has yet to be funded, however.

The Department of Homeland Securities Appropriations Bill, which provides appropriations for the SAFER Act is still on the floor of the Senate.

At this time, the bill contains one amendment introduced at the House of Representatives by the Congressional Fire Services Caucus (co-chaired by Curt Weldon (R-PA) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD)), which allows for $50 million in appropriations for fiscal year 2005.

Rep. Michael E. Capuano, D-Somerville, said he was keeping close eyes on the appropriations bill. “It’s wait and see for us at this point.”

“We’re always actively searching for any way to fund the fire houses and police departments,” he said.

In the meantime, Kelleher said he has to make do with the 138 firefighters he’s got.

“I’d like to have 172-175 fighters,” he said. The payroll cost to the city for a department that large would be $1.7 to $1.85 million, on top of an annual fire department budget of $10 million.

“Hopefully we’ll hit bottom soon,” he said. “We’ve been going in the wrong direction for 30 years.”