LYNNFIELD — Fire Chief Glenn Davis has asked the Select Board to approve the hiring of four new career firefighters to fill staffing gaps caused by a continuing decline in the number of callbacks.
“We rely heavily on the callback of firefighters, both call and career, from home during the nighttime hours,” Davis said during a budget presentation to the Select Board at its last meeting. “While our community has changed substantially, our fire protection plan or system remains essentially the same as it did 50 years ago.”
Davis added that staffing changes put in place in 2017 “greatly improved” the response capabilities of the department, especially during weekends. However, it has seen a 30 percent increase of incident volume since then.
The department’s proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2024 calls for a 21.8 percent increase, rising from $1,773,408 in 2023 to $2,160,555. Salaries account for the lion’s share of the jump, increasing nearly 45 percent from $683,895 to $988,648.
Davis said the four new positions are budgeted at approximately $320,000 with the balance of the overall salary increase attributed to a two percent increase from 2023.
The new positions will hopefully be funded with a SAFER (Staffing for an Adequate Firefighter Emergency Response) grant.
Davis said the grant process is extremely competitive. The department applied for funding last year only to be denied. The program provides funding for salaries and benefits for a 36-month period with the town assuming the costs in year four. Davis said a grant writer with a history of success with SAFER grants has been hired to complete the process.
Davis said that of the 22 call firefighters currently on staff, fewer than half are able to work shifts due to their primary careers, and only about half of them are meeting the 10 percent response/callback requirements.
“Our call firefighters are finding it increasingly difficult to balance the requirements expected of being an actively-participating call firefighter with the demands of full time careers and active children’s schedules,” Davis said at the Feb. 13 Select Board meeting.
Davis said the department currently has eight firefighters on staff every day. They are split into two groups of four which rotate 12 hours on and 12 hours off. Two of the new firefighters will be added to each group and work a night shift, which would increase nighttime staffing from two to four.
“Currently, with only two on duty, if we transport a medical call by our own ambulance that means we are relying 100 percent on callbacks to staff the station for the potential next call,” Davis said.
He specifically referred to the 8 p.m.- 5 a.m. night shift as “the bewitching hours.”
“We are lucky if we get two members back, sometimes three, and that’s barely enough to handle the call,” Davis said. “Quite often, it’s zero (callbacks), leaving us unprotected for that next call.”
In response to a question from Select Board Chair Phil Crawford asking how many times the station has been unmanned in the last two years, Davis said it was more times than he wanted to admit.
He did note that the department has to rely on mutual aid, but described it as a “delayed response.” He added that he does not know where the responders are coming from and that responses from nearby communities such as Danvers and Swampscott “are long, unacceptable response times.”
In response to a question from Board Member Joe Connell about what impact Route 1 and Route 128 have on the number of times the fire department responds to mutual aid requests, Davis said the department responded to 324 requests for aid in 2022. This is up substantially from 2021 when there were only 57 responses, with the Peabody and Saugus departments topping the charts.
“This is a hot topic with Essex County fire chiefs,” said Davis. “We are always asking, ‘How do we fix this? What’s the solution?’ Nobody has one yet other than a strong mutual aid system. It’s been working well for the coverage but some of the response times are greater than what they should be, but we’re not seeing it as much in Lynnfield because we’re not leaving ourselves exposed. Our current staffing model protects us that way.”
The staffing problem is not limited to medical aid requests.
“Our last two structural fires, our turnout was dismal,” Davis said. “Fires burn hotter and quicker than ever, so while 30 years ago the average time to get out of a house was 17 minutes, now it’s three to five minutes.”
Staffing problems have also been adversely impacted by longer ambulance call turnarounds at area hospitals. In response to a question from Board Member Dick Dalton about what the typical turnaround time is, Davis said “it used to be under an hour.” However, he added that Melrose Wakefield Hospital has been having an “awful time” turning ambulances around because no beds are available.
“They could be standing in a hallway waiting for a bed assignment for up to 45 minutes,” Davis said.
Lahey Clinic in Burlington is the town’s top receiving host, he said, while Melrose Wakefield is second.
Dalton asked if there are any alternatives other than adding four new firefighters.
“We’re always looking at this and have tried many things,” Davis said. “We put a lot of the responsibility on the call firefighter. They are very well paid in Lynnfield… and we are looking at how do we incentivize call firefighters to respond at night. We’ve looked at increased pay and benefits and responsibilities, and we pay for re-certifications.”
Davis began the presentation by saying that his goal has always been to keep the community “as safe as possible.” While his top priority is to continue to recruit and retain call firefighters, his top concern is that “continued attrition and turnover… makes it extremely challenging to manage and maintain the call division.”
The department operates on what Davis called a “combination model” utilizing both call and career firefighters, which was adopted to address a problem at that time.
In the last three years, 23 members have resigned from the fire department, yet only 15 new members have been hired. Davis said that the majority left to take full time positions elsewhere or because their availability was impacted by “changes at home.”
New firefighters must undergo a 16-week program to be certified and must also be Emergency Medical Trainers, which requires 16 weeks of training. Call firefighters must maintain a 10 percent call rate and take a minimum of 24 hours each year of mandatory fire training.
“All of that is making it more and more difficult to keep these firefighters,” said Davis.
Currently the department has only two firefighters on duty during the overnight 6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. shift.
Additionally, the department is facing an ongoing “EMS staffing crisis” resulting in longer-than-normal response times and increased mutual aid responses to assist neighboring communities. This is because many private ambulance companies do not have adequate staff to fulfill their contracts. Seventy percent of the department’s call volume is due to medical emergencies.
Davis said the department billed $2.6 million on 2,142 runs in ambulance gross services in 2022, substantially more than in 2021 when the department billed $1.9 million on 1,907 runs.
The demand for services is up substantially over the past few years, Davis said.
“The EMS staffing crisis in the EMS world doesn’t impact Lynnfield as much because all call firefighters are EMTs and most of the career firefighters are paramedics, which allow us to staff at the ALS level,” he added.
