PARKERSBURG, W.Va.-- The city of Parkersburg isn't alone in struggling with questions about fire department manpower.
It is difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison of municipal fire departments, since the geography, fire load and duties differ for each. But when it comes to meeting the National Fire Protection Association "good-practice" of having four firefighters per company, which generally consists of one truck, Parkersburg and West Virginia's other four largest cities all find themselves coming up short.
Huntington staffs each of its fire trucks with a minimum of one officer and two other firefighters, fire Chief Greg Fuller said.
"We believe that three persons per response vehicle is the absolute minimum that
