L.A. Fire Department Needs More Funds for Major Emergencies, Chief Says

Prior to the approval of the Los Angeles Fire Department's new personnel deployment plan, debate raged at community meetings in Chatsworth and Porter Ranch over whether the result would impact  emergency services. (Scroll down to see the poll at the end of the story.)

Just 2½ months into the plan that cut the LAFD's budget by $54 million, newly appointed Chief Brian Cummings said Tuesday that he is prepared to ask the City Council for more funding to cover days when multiple large blazes stretch resources thin and require overtime staffing.

The department nearly had one of those days earlier this month.

On Sept. 5, the department deployed 53 firetrucks and ambulances and two helicopters to three separate brush fires, one of which scorched about 40 acres off Mandeville Canyon Road in Brentwood. The other two blazes were near Agua Dulce and Sun Valley.

At the day's peak, 14 fire stations were left without any firefighting
vehicles. Department officials said adjacent stations were equipped with fire engines.

Over the next two days, temperatures were hot and the risk of fires went up. The department paid firefighters to staff 18 reserve fire engines as a precaution.

"We were able to do that the night before, so we didn't have that time delay. However, there is the cost, because the cost is not built into our budget," Cummings said.

He told the Board of Fire Commissioners that he will ask the City Council to reimburse the department for money used to call up overtime staff when necessary. Until the council agrees to give the department more funding, Cummings said he is using hours that would otherwise be devoted to department projects scheduled in the future.

"As we get later in the fiscal year, it will start becoming an issue,
because we have less and less flexibility, less and less money in our account, and it will become critical," Cummings said. "So we will be going to City Council and asking for reimbursement for those deployments."

He said the financial support will be critical as the region gets deeper
into peak fire season and dry Santa Ana winds blow through.

Cummings' new deployment plan, which went into effect July 5, eliminated 18 firetrucks or ambulances from daily active duty. He argued for the new plan in front of the City Council earlier this year.

The department used computer software to analyze four years of trends in the locations, types and frequencies of incidents to come up with the plan.

The permanent deployment realigns the department to focus more resources on emergency paramedic response, which makes up about 83 percent of calls to the department.

In April, Cummings said the plan deploys levels of field resources to
match the needs within each fire station's district.

The plan riled residents of Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, the Pacific Palisades, Wilmington and other areas that lost emergency crews to the new deployments.

Councilman Bill Rosendahl was an outspoken critic of the plan. He voted to approve Cummings as the new fire chief last week, but warned that he was still concerned about a lack of coverage in the Palisades.

The department is currently analyzing data on nearly 80,000 responses since July to find out how response times and emergency service have been affected by the new deployment.

Battalion Chief John Martinez told the commission that the department
used a variety of responses on Sept. 5 that kept the city's fire and emergency response abilities at a safe level, including canceling all department training exercises to ensure all firefighters were available to respond to calls. The department also moved to a so-called degraded dispatch, meaning fewer firefighters or firetrucks responded to calls than usually would.

Cummings also said Tuesday the department is struggling to afford
maintenance required on the fire department's fleet of trucks.

"We have fewer resources responding on the same or greater amount of calls [since the new deployment], so there is more wear and tear," Cummings told the commission. "We're able to hire additional heavy mechanics, but it's been three years since we've had replacement of heavy apparatus, so we're falling further and further off of our replacement cycle."

Commission President Genethia Hudley-Hayes urged the department to let Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and City Council members know about the increased cost to the department on high-response days, "because we're going to have the same round of budget cuts in our next go-round, and we're going to have to be fighting for every dollar we can get back."

City News Service contributed to this report.

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