Fallout from the city’s $6 million budget deficit continued Tuesday, with Vancouver Fire Chief Don Bivins announcing that the city’s only remaining medical rescue unit will be eliminated.
The loss of the unit, which is part of Station 3 at 1110 Devine Road, will cause “significant delays” in response times to calls made in central Vancouver, Bivins said.
Four firefighter positions are targeted for early retirement, which would cover the remaining $425,000 Bivins must trim from his department’s budget.
Up to 30 such early retirement incentives will happen citywide, part of staff reductions that included 44 layoffs and the elimination of 22 open jobs last week — the fire department lost 12.5 civilian jobs and cut four vacant firefighter positions.
When the four firefighters go, the department will be short the staff necessary to man the two-person rescue unit, which was introduced in 2003 to alleviate the calls the station’s single fire engine was covering.
Before, calls to the busy Vancouver Heights station had increased to the point where neighboring stations were forced to handle almost one-third of its 911 calls because the engine was tied up on another incident.
Neighboring stations will again have to cover for the Station 3 engine if it is busy on another call — meaning several minutes could be added to the response time, Bivins said. Emergencies that took an average of five minutes to reach before may now take eight or even 10 minutes, he said.
Both the rescue unit and the engine are first responders to medical emergencies, generally arriving before the private ambulance company, American Medical Response, which transports patients to the hospital.
In 2008, the rescue unit covered 2,844 calls, while the engine responded to 1,718. Now, the single engine will take on all calls from the 27,000-person neighborhood, Bivins said.
“If anything, (the neighborhood) has grown” since 2003, he said. “Consequently, we anticipate that the fire engine will be out of position, away from the station, even more.”
The city lost its other medical rescue unit last year when the nine firefighters assigned to the rig at Fisher’s Landing were moved to create an engine company at the new Pacific Park station.
Retirement incentives
The retirement incentives are open to those in the fire department who have reached the eligible retirement age of 53 and have at least five years of service, Local 452 Union President Mark Johnston said. Firefighters will get $1,000 for every year of service to the city, plus a lump payment to cover COBRA medical premiums for three months, Johnston said.
Bivins said that the deadline to apply is the end of this week. At least two firefighters have put in retirement paperwork, he said.
If four firefighters do not volunteer, the chief said layoffs are likely.
“Line firefighters are being lost, either through layoffs or retirement,” he said.
Firefighters may be hesitant to apply for the incentives, however. City pensions for anyone hired after 1977 do not include health insurance, Bivins said. “As time goes on, more and more firefighters and officers are continuing to work,” he said. “The job is physically demanding. It’s not good to keep people in positions just because they can’t afford health insurance.”
Four people in the department do have health insurance in retirement, as they were hired under the previous pension system. But Bivins said he’s “confident” that two of those employees will not retire.
The layoffs were devastating in a department that already has staffing levels well below other similar Washington cities, he said. As of 2008, Vancouver had .71 firefighters per 1,000 residents, versus Tacoma’s 1.66 firefighters per 1,000 and Spokane’s 1.43 per 1,000.
The fire department has arranged an informal liaison program, where two of the remaining employees check in regularly with the laid-off worker, helping them through networking and general support.
“The people we laid off were incredibly dedicated to this organization and this community,” Bivins said. “They left with dignity and displayed the consummate professionals that they are.”
