Dec. 4—Bellingham Fire Department is short on fire engines because of maintenance issues, forcing the city to shuffle firefighting equipment among its six stations and leaving parts of the city vulnerable in the event of a large fire or similar serious emergency.
On Friday two stations in the city were without fire engines for about 24 hours, a firefighters' union official told The Bellingham Herald.
"It was important enough for us to let the public know," Hunter Elliott told The Bellingham Herald. Elliott is a firefighter-paramedic but he was speaking in his role as vice president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 106, which represents Bellingham firefighters and other career firefighters in Whatcom County.
Elliott said that Engine 31 serving Marietta and Engine 6 serving North Bellingham needed repairs but the city's Public Works Department doesn't have a mechanic who is qualified to work on fire pumps. In the meantime, fire engines that need repairs are being send to private companies for maintenance, he said.
"This isn't directed at the fleet staff. They do a great job," Elliott said.
The fIrefighters' union wrote about the situation on their social media over the weekend, and Fire Chief Bill Hewett confirmed the union's statement in an interview, saying it was caused by a "perfect storm" of mechanical troubles.
"To some degree, it's hard to have five or six pieces of apparatus break down at the same time. I don't know how you prepare for an entire battalion of rigs to fall apart on the same day," Hewett told The Herald.
Hewett said that two stations were without an engine for 24 hours on Friday and Saturday but no stations were closed. The situation will be corrected in full by Wednesday, Dec. 6, he said.
"The whole time we did have a crew on duty with an ambulance ready to respond to an emergency. Our hope is that we won't see this happen again in the future. When things are on fire, the things we need are a pump and water" from a fire engine, he said.
Bellingham has five fire stations across the city with a crew to staff an engine and an ambulance and one station with an engine, ambulance and a ladder truck. It has three reserve or backup engines and one backup ladder truck.
Since 2016, the city has been replacing its front-line engines on the average of about one a year, he said. A new engine can cost $1 million or more.
City Councilman Dan Hammill told The Herald that council members learned about "service deficiencies on the north end" on Friday.
"We need to have more certified technicians in Public Works shops to make sure that our rigs are online. The City Council stands behind our firefighters 100%," Hammill said in an interview.
"We don't want this to become a situation where this is a systemic problem," he said.
Hewett said that the city is in the process of hiring at least one Public Works position for a fire pump mechanic.
Dean Tharp, president of the Guild of Pacific Northwest Employees Local 1937, told The Herald that the mechanic with knowledge of fire pumps recently quit and is working for higher wages at a Mount Vernon company where Bellingham Fire is outsourcing some of its repairs.
A dispute over pay inequities among Public Works employees has led to resignations and a shortage of maintenance personnel, Tharp said.
"It's in a crisis from my perspective. There's no one there to fix (fire engines) now. The city has refused to backfill positions while we have this dispute," he said.
This story was originally published December 4, 2023, 12:00 PM.
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