Norwich, CT, Combines Paid and Volunteer Fire Departments for Unified Service

Norwich — The city on Friday created a unified fire service — placing its paid department and five volunteer departments under one umbrella, all led by the city fire chief.

The decision was announced in a Friday afternoon press release from City Manager John Salomone. The release said the move was effective immediately.

Shortly after the announcement during a joint phone call, Salomone and City of Norwich Fire Chief Sam Wilson discussed the reasoning behind the decision, which they said was made with the intent of bettering services for residents, while decreasing the “fragmentation” between the paid and volunteer staff.

“That fragmentation has, at times, impacted both safety and service delivery,” Salomone wrote in the release. “With this policy, we are closing those gaps. We are standardizing training, communications and emergency response protocols across the board.”

“We talked about having a very fragmented response. We have six different fire departments here in the City of Norwich,” Wilson said during the call. “What we’re going to be doing is creating a standard of coverage — which is the base expectation that any citizen will be able to count on.”

Wilson did not cite specific instances of such fragmentation, but said that during periodic reviews over his six months as chief, he’s seen it come up as a consistent problem.

“There were just many, many instances where I saw a lot of ability for improvement. And we do have that ability. And it’s free of cost. All it takes is someone to come in (and do it).”

So he and Salomone, recognizing their power under the city charter to institute the change without an ordinance or charter change, went to work on the policy. Salomone said City Attorney Michael Driscoll read and approved it.

Wilson said the goal of the new policy is to provide a better standard of coverage across the entire city.

“What we need to focus on is our end user, or our end customer, which is the citizens,” Wilson said. “It’s not that we’re not getting out there and servicing the customer, but we can do better.”

What’s changing?

Wilson said the new policy institutes a new organizational structure for who’s in charge at a fire or emergency scene.

Under the new policy, when firefighters — whether they’re career or volunteer firefighters with the Taftville, Occum, Laurel Hill, Yantic or East Great Plain volunteer fire departments — respond to an emergency in the city, the city fire chief will take command, followed by the four city battalion chiefs.

But Wilson said if a volunteer chief gets to a scene first and establishes command, and the city chief or battalion chief arrives and finds they’ve got the situation under control, they can cede their command to the volunteer chief.

During two recent fires, at the Uncas on Thames campus on West Thames Street and the former Colonial Car Wash building on West Main Street, volunteer chiefs were first to arrive.

“In both of those cases, the volunteer chief was in command, and the battalion chief took an operations (lesser command) role,” Wilson said. “Now, the battalion chief could reassign him.”

“But that's not going to be the way it is all the time, because we’re very collaborative together,” he added.

Wilson said having this clear chain of command, and protocol on transfer of command, removes “any question of who’s going to be responsible for operational decision making,” at an emergency call.

Beyond establishing a chain of command, the Friday release also states that the policy will make it so paid and volunteer departments adhere to the same “standard of coverage,” including standards for response times, staffing and future infrastructure needs, follow the same set of “standard operating guidelines,” to ensure all personnel follow the same high standards and use the same communications systems “to improve coordination during critical incidents.”

The effect on volunteer departments

Salomone wrote in the release that he wanted to be clear that the change was not about eliminating “tradition or local identity.”

“It’s about building something stronger — together,” he wrote. “Our volunteer and career firefighters remain vital to this city's emergency response system. This policy brings everyone under one roof, with one mission.”

Two of the five volunteer departments own their own buildings. The other three are owned by the city, which also pays for all fire apparatus, equipment and building maintenance.

Three volunteer chiefs could not be reached for comment Thursday. Yantic Chief Bobby Allen and Taftville Chief Timothy Jencks declined to comment on the policy at this time.

“The fire department had been operating under the other situation for 70 years,” Salomone said. “This is a change. So anytime there’s a change, there’s going to be some consternation about the change.”

Salomone and Wilson worried the policy might be viewed by volunteers or their supporters as a plan to eliminate the volunteer departments, or undermine their authority.

“This is actually the opposite,” Salomone said. “This is not going to get into the structure of any of the volunteer fire departments. They will still select all their volunteers, do all the promotions, work on the budget, in consultation with me, which they do now. A lot of the internal workings of the volunteers will stay the same as they are now.”

“It’s very important that they have the autonomy of operating their houses,” he added.

Salomone said the policy will not cost residents any extra money and it will not affect the fire district tax rates they pay. Currently, there are six fire districts, and residents have a different tax rate, and pay higher taxes, if they live in the City Consolidated District, versus one of the five volunteer districts. Those who live in the city fire district pay higher taxes because they have paid firefighters always on duty.

Currently a controversial policy known as auto-aid exists in the city, wherein the paid department automatically responds to any fire in the city. Wilson said with the new policy, that will not go away.