By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer
March 28, 2004
Both paid and volunteer firefighters sometimes violate the department's policy requiring an annual physical, according to the department's training officer, who hopes a recently enacted departmental procedure will resolve the issue.
"They push the limit," Capt. John Sabito said. "They want to play games and not keep current on their physicals."
The Greenwich Fire Depart-ment is pushing career and volunteer firefighters to take their required annual physicals as part of an overall effort to improve firefighter safety, Sabito said.
New checks have been instituted to ensure that no firefighter can take part in firefighting activity without evidence of a recent physical.
Deputy Greenwich Fire Chief Joseph Benoit said department officials have been concerned with ensuring firefighters receive their yearly physicals, but it has become a priority in recent months.
Benoit said the emphasis on physicals is related to the department's reaction to the Dec. 5 blaze on Davis Avenue in which three firefighters were seriously injured. While physical condition was not a factor in the injuries, a review of procedures that followed the fire showed that some firefighters were taking part in operations without having had updated physicals.
"We were lax on the enforcement end of it and not enforcing it as rigidly as it should have been done," Benoit said. "This is a general part of an effort to make things tighter because the December accident was really a wake-up call."
In January, Sabito and Richard Gough, a Trumbull-based fire and emergency operations service consultant, rewrote the department's procedures for tracking locations of firefighters at emergency scenes to make them more stringent.
The policy gives more detailed guidelines for reporting to scenes, including requiring firefighters to turn in "entry tags" to an accountability officer upon arriving. The tags show a firefighter's training qualifications and health information, including date of last physical. Firefighters whose information does not meet requirements cannot fight fires. The policy is in response to a citation from the Division of Occupational Safety & Health Administration following the Davis Avenue fire. OSHA fined the town for violating regulations for tracking firefighters during that incident.
The department requires firefighters to have an annual physical, as well as a twice-yearly stress test for strength and stamina.
At several emergency calls since January, volunteer firefighters without tags have been sent away from incidents, which prompted them to get their checkups, Benoit said. The training division also has worked with volunteer districts' chiefs to spell out the rule.
"We've been saying, 'Look: You really need to have your tags,' " Benoit said.
It has been easier to crack down on career firefighters, who must meet requirements to remain employed, Benoit said. Figures on the number of firefighters without physicals were not available last week.
Physicals are a critical component for knowing if a firefighter is robust enough for strenuous firefighting, according to Benoit.
For instance, during a recent stress test to monitor cardiological health, one firefighter was diagnosed with a previously unidentified heart problem that could have been fatal under the stress of firefighting.
Benoit said the firefighter was taken off active firefighting duty until his problem was medically under control.
John Novak, president of the Greenwich Fire Fighters Local 1042, which represents the town's 97 career firefighters, said it's rare for career firefighters to delay their required physicals.
"I don't think there is a problem from our end," Novak said.
Novak said when the accountability procedures were implemented earlier this year, he requested and received from Sabito a list of career and volunteer officers, which indicated that some of them had expired entry tags.
Novak said many of those officers have since had their tags updated.
Occasionally, a career firefighter fails to have his physical within the 30-day grace period after the deadline to be examined, and has to be put on light duty until the training captain verifies he is fit.
"It doesn't happen often," Novak said.
Tobias Ostapchuk, the town's director of volunteer firefighter retainment and recruitment, said he believes volunteers have been receiving their physicals in a timely fashion.
"I don't see it as an issue," Ostapchuk said.
Benoit hopes it won't become one, now that the department is paying increased attention to the physicals.
"Anybody who is going to go into a hazardous atmosphere, you need to know if they can take that type of punishment," Benoit said. "It's a very dangerous job to crawl into a burning building, and you're expending tremendous amounts of energy."
Copyright © 2004, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.