May 04--As the Ventura County wildfire continued to burn, Los Angeles officials cited concerns Friday for firefighter and public safety and urged that a plan to divert fire resources to staff 11 new ambulances beginning Sunday be temporarily delayed.
Fire Chief Brian Cummings said through an aide Friday that he plans to proceed with the new staffing plan on Sunday unless the city is able to provide the additional $1.3 million in funding that would be needed to halt the program.
City Councilman Richard Alarcon is pushing for that funding.
"We have a firestorm going on out there, and the last thing we want to do is put any firefighter in jeopardy," Alarcon said. "A few years ago, there were 500 homes in my district destroyed in a fire. I would hate to think it could have been 600."
Alarcon was unsuccessful in immediately halting the new deployment, but he said he will press on Tuesday to have the city provide the $1.3 million in overtime funding needed to fully staff the ambulances and firetrucks through the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
Cummings proposed the new plan last month as a way to increase the number of basic life support ambulances available around the city.
"We have 11 stations with only a light force vehicle," Deputy Chief Darren Palacios told the council's Personnel and Animal Services Committee. "The chief's plan is to add a basic life support ambulance to those
stations to respond to emergency calls and keep the light-force available to respond to fires and other calls."
To accomplish that, however, will require taking one firefighter from each light force, reducing its staffing to five.
Alarcon said he was concerned the reduction in staffing would create a greater risk for firefighters.
"There is a reason we had six firefighters on the trucks," Alarcon said. "It was for the safety of the firefighters and the public. If it wasn't, then we have wasted millions of dollars over the years with this staffing."
But Councilman Bernard Parks reminded the council it was within the past six months that officials berated the department for its slow response times on medical emergencies.
"This chief, in a plan approved by the Fire Commission, moved 22 out of 3,000 firefighters to respond to the criticism of him," Parks said. "Eighty-five percent of their workload is paramedics. If he can't move 22 people to create a better atmosphere for the public, something is wrong.
"Not one of us has ever responded to a fire call. To run the fire department, I would hope we let the fire chief be the fire chief and make the deployment decisions."
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