It’s rare that Amherst firefighters get to enjoy their time away from work without interruption.
Missing kid’s birthday parties, doctor’s appointments and family time, firefighters have worked up to 14 hours after their scheduled shifts and as long as 38 hours at a time.
Amherst Fire Chief Tim Nelson said a staffing study conducted in the 1960s stated there should be at least 15 firefighters on staff per shift in Amherst. Almost 60 years later, call volume has increased by 500% and the department often has as few as seven firefighters on duty at a time.
Amherst is one of several fire departments across Massachusetts that say they’re experiencing historic levels of understaffing.
The Amherst Fire Department responds to an average of 17 calls per day, servicing close to 40,000 residents, student populations at the University of Massachusetts, Hampshire College and Amherst College and providing emergency medical services to the neighboring towns of Pelham, Shutesbury and Leverett.
With a full-time staff of about 40 firefighters, the department is stretched thin and logging overtime hours is a common occurrence. These firefighters work two 24-hour shifts with one day off in between, followed by five days off.
While an off-duty firefighter cannot be forced to work on days off, an on-duty firefighter can be held at the station if the department is in jeopardy of falling below the minimum staffing requirements of seven firefighters in the summer and eight in the academic year.
“We do a lot of overtime, and we do quite a few holdovers,” Nelson said. He blames the lack of funding for the high number of holdovers.
The average call, from the time a firefighter is dispatched from the station to the time they return, lasts around two hours, said Matt Sposito, an Amherst firefighter and the president of the Local 1764.
Sposito said it is common that a firefighter will be responding to emergency calls for 15 hours of a 24-hour shift, and holdovers are becoming more frequent in the department facing serious understaffing issues.
“You’re just operating with very little rest,” he said. “We generally have a pot of coffee on 24 hours a day, just in case you need a little caffeine boost.”
But the issue of understaffing is not unique to this college town in Western Massachusetts.
Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts President Richard MacKinnon said most fire departments in the state have experience with low staffing numbers as a result of insufficient budgets.
“A majority of our locals are understaffed and it's basically due, mainly, to underfunding,” MacKinnon said. “Every municipality has priorities, public safety being one of them. But a lot of times we see budgets get underfunded.”
Shifting priorities
MacKinnon highlighted the Taunton Fire Department as another organization feeling the pressures of underfunding.
When the Taunton Fire Department responded to an apartment building fire on Aug. 13 with just one ladder truck, Local 138 President Jason Lawrence said the state-wide trend’s impact on their community was evident.
With 80% of the department’s calls requesting medical assistance, Lawrence said Taunton has prioritized these services and as a result, fire response has suffered.
“We’ve shifted all our man-power to the engines that respond to medical calls,” he said. “But then when we have a fire, we realize that we’re missing the ladders that we used to have.”
Lawrence said Taunton Fire has 127 employees, and this number has not changed since the 1980s, when the department had three ladder trucks.
The population of over 54,000 people in Taunton has increased by about 12,000 since 1980.
“The city and the politicians kind of get stuck with that number, and they don’t want to go over it, so we work within that,” he said. “It’s just tough to have enough guys to do anything at any given time.”
Firefighters from the Raynham, Dighton, Norton and Rehoboth fire departments were called in to assist with putting out the six-apartment building fire earlier this month, according to a statement.
This approach of contacting nearby departments for additional services, or mutual aid, is frequently relied on, but is likely to delay the time it takes to safely get an emergency situation under control.
“Through mutual aid, people end up showing up from surrounding cities and towns later in the event,” Needham Fire Chief and President of the Fire Chiefs’ Association of Massachusetts Dennis Condon said.
“If you are relying on cities and towns surrounding you, they may be understaffed as well, and they may not be able to send as much help as you need,” he said. “It can have a snowball effect.”
Condon said up until last year, when the Needham Fire Department was awarded a $1.6 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to hire eight new firefighters, the department was considered understaffed based on national standards.
The grant will help Needham’s department offset the salary costs for these new staff members for their first three years, Condon said.
As of July 1, when the eight new firefighters had completed training and became full-time staff, Condon said Taunton’s 72-person department was able to meet the minimum staffing requirements set by the National Fire Protection Association’s 1710 standard.
“In the 1970s, we had the highest number of firefighters -- around 80 uniformed personnel. Over time, cuts have been made,” he said.
Increased call volumes
Despite emergency incidents reported to the Needham fire station increasing from less than 1,000 a year in the 1970s to over 4,000 a year today, the staffing numbers have been on the decline, Condon said.
“The demands on us have increased dramatically,” he said.
In part, MacKinnon attributes this to heightened call volumes.
“I think because public safety as a whole has done a good job educating the public, they rely on the 9-1-1 system and the emergency system maybe a lot more than in prior decades,” he said.
MacKinnon added that emergency calls have become more labor-intensive in nature, like technical rescue, hazmat and active shooter response.
Nelson does not have the capacity to adequately staff the two crippling fire stations in town.
“There are times when our safety margins are closer or tighter than I feel comfortable with,” Nelson said. “We have great equipment, we have great training, and we have really great people, but at the same time, the resource that we really need and have needed ... we need people.”
Local 1764 is very active and transparent about the issues impeding Amherst Fire. In the June 24 post they said “staffing levels are unsustainable without significant change,” and that there are only 1.1 firefighters per 1,000 Amherst residents, one of the lowest ratios in the state.
“We’re just trying to get the townspeople to be informed, it’s our biggest concern,” Sposito said. “It’s been going on 30 years that they haven’t paid attention and staffed us appropriately, and we’re kind of at a point where we’re not able to effectively keep up with the changes in urgent care and firefighting strategies.”
“It's absolutely a public safety concern,” he added.
'They have no choice to do more with less'
The Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts, an organization of more than 12,000 members, advocates for adequate staffing, according to MacKinnon, but many departments continue to pose a safety risk to the community and to their own employees.
"If a fire department is not adequately staffed, it is a risk to public safety,” MacKinnon said. “You're going to see longer response times, and quite frankly, you're going to see injuries to firefighters because they chose, and they have no choice, to do more with less.”
“We see it every day across the state, that firefighters are doing more with less,” he added.
The Amherst Fire Department is currently looking to hire one firefighter, but Nelson said this is to fill a vacant position, and not an addition to the staff.
As the 2019-20 school year approaches, Sposito said the department is unlikely to see any relief, and the population in Amherst will double as students arrive back to the area.
Nelson said he meets with the Amherst Town Manager Paul Bockelman on a regular basis, and the issue of staffing in the department comes up every time.
Bockelman could not be reached for comment.
Objectives detailed in the Amherst 2020 budget state the town is working to review and implement recommendations from a recent staffing study conducted on the fire department. The budget also lists “analyze and address the increase in emergency medical service calls, especially from senior care facilities,” as another objective.
“It’s still a funding issue, that’s the thing. It comes down to saying that they’ll find the funds to add staff, and those funds have not been identified,” Nelson said.
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