Aug. 18--Detroit will train up to 100 new firefighters, move fire stations and place new equipment in them and redeploy firefighters across the city under a plan taking shape as part of emergency manager Kevyn Orr's effort to restructure city government.
Edward J. Plawecki Jr., the former judge hired to help craft the plan, said his work is a direct response to a dangerous reality: Detroit has fewer than 800 firefighters, 40 operating fire stations and only 20 ambulances.
The plan, which is getting substantial input from union leaders who have been meeting quietly and almost daily with Plawecki over the last six months, will be released in mid-September. Plawecki offered few details about the report but did say that the city will get 40 new ambulances -- 20 in August and 20 in October. Additionally, six to eight private ambulances will continue to be in service daily.
The number of new jobs "all depends on the number of stations left open and potential vacancies," Plawecki said. "We would probably like to get somewhere closer to the middle of where we were before the financial crisis, so you're talking about a hundred additional firefighters."
The city's firefighting division has dropped from 1,027 to 796 since 2011, according to city personnel records. And more resignations are expected, according to labor leaders and firefighters. Detroit has also lost 30 of its 180 EMS technicians in the last year and a half, union officials said.
Plawecki said the plan's goal is to ensure that fire stations have the same equipment and can meet industry-standard response times.
Plawecki's comments came at Orr's request, in response to the question of whether the city is safe after losing more than a fifth of its firefighters.
"The city is safe," Plawecki said.
Plawecki is one of several contractors working to restructure public safety. Among them is Conway-McKenzie, which is based in Birmingham and has a $4.2-million contract (which just was increased to $19 million) to evaluate the city's departments and operations for inefficiencies.
Dan McNamara, president of International Association of Fire Fighters Local 344 of the Detroit Fire Fighters Association, which last month called the city's bankruptcy filing premature, praised Orr and Plawecki, saying that it's the first time the city has listened to firefighters in decades.
"The union has been asking for years to be able to be part of the solution, and it's turning out that we're being heard," McNamara said. "The emergency manager and his team have reached out to us and want to see a plan from us, and we want to give them one because the safety of the residents is most important.
"Ask me this question: Has your union ever met with Conway-MacKenzie? The answer would be no. We were told they would sit down with us. They never did."
Nowling said the emergency manager is re-evaluating the numerous contracts that have been granted in efforts to fix the city's finances.
"We're going to pull Conway-MacKenzie out of police and fire," Nowling said, adding that the firm's contract was left over from the financial review that initially found the city in dire straits. "We can restrict and restructure their scope. We've got bankruptcy people in place now."
He praised Plawecki, as well. "He knows these issues. From a variety of standpoints, he has the ability to meet with the guys and gals in the union and work with them."
McNamara, while pleased to be in the loop, disagreed on how safe the city is.
"It's absolutely not. We're bare bones," he said. "We try to put our chin out there and say, 'We got you covered,' but we're responding with less response now."
He said the department is investigating only one of every five arsons, and sometimes, if too many calls come at once, it cannot handle all the calls. "We've already had days where, after two fires, our whole east side is out of companies," he said. "We're at risk every day. If we have multiple fires at once time, there's a chance we may not make it to one."
Joe Barney, union rep for EMS to the police association, agreed that things are bad.
"We all recognize the city's broke," he said. "We all recognize that it's going to have to get rebuilt. To get Detroit back to being a functional city, you've got to fix public services."
But, he said, "In the 41-year history of the EMS, this is an all-time low. This is as bad as it gets, with the vehicles we have that are not working and service issues. On top of that, we have personnel leaving in droves."
Barney said that 80% of emergency 911 calls in Detroit are for EMS, but EMS receives only 20% of the funding.
"We're out in the field doing 20 calls in 12 hours," he said. Barney said one of the city's technicians had a heart attack Friday while doing CPR on a patient.
"We send an ambulance out for cardiac arrest, and we don't meet industry standards. He dropped his patient off alive while he was having a heart attack, then went to the ER, where they treated him immediately.
"He survived, and he's, in fact, laying three beds over from the guy he brought into the hospital," Barney said. "I talked to him this evening to make sure his family was OK, and he's doing better, but he's scared. He said the stress of the job is getting to be too much."
Copyright 2013 - Detroit Free Press
