By Jeff Morganteen
Advocate Staff Writer
Posted: 11/30/2008 02:41:08 AM EST
STAMFORD - It's a scene that has played out in volunteer firehouses throughout the country: A small volunteer fire department hires a full-time driver, then a full-time firefighter. As the roster of paid firefighters grows, so does their power and influence.
"It's inevitable," said Vincent Dunn, a retired deputy chief at the New York City Fire Department and author of several textbooks on firefighting. "There's not enough volunteers in the community."
In Stamford, tensions between paid and volunteer firefighters have been exacerbated by a proposed consolidation plan announced by city officials last summer. City officials said they sought to improve fire coverage and save on overtime costs by unifying three of the Big Five volunteer departments with the city-run fire department, but only one volunteer firehouse agreed to go along with the plan.
The Turn of River Fire Department took the city to court over control of its district, and the Belltown Fire Department went all-volunteer. The Glenbrook Fire Department agreed to the plan and is now staffed by city firefighters and supplemented with volunteers.
That combination system has grown in popularity because of a decline in volunteers, Dunn said. But tensions brought about in Stamford by the consolidation plan, which some volunteer chiefs have compared to a "takeover," raise questions about whether Stamford volunteers and paid firefighters can work together once a resolution is reached.
"Anytime you do consolidation like that, the horns come out and everyone gets crazy," Dunn said. "What's going on in Stamford is not really a good indicator of the relationship between volunteer and career firefighters."
Mayor Dannel Malloy said the consolidation plan has improved fire coverage and saved money, despite two volunteer departments' refusal to join the plan.
"The bottom line is people are safer and money is being saved," Malloy said. "If the departments would choose to cooperate, we could do even better."
Turn of River volunteer Chief Frank Jacobellis said tensions between volunteers and paid firefighters arise because of a small faction on each side. Mired in a pending legal contest with the city and dealing with an 88 percent decrease in his operating budget, Jacobellis said his argument is not with city firefighters but with the city and how it handled the consolidation plan.
"We had a working system before," Jacobellis said. "It's politics that stopped it. We didn't have some catastrophe and the city said we needed to do something."
Before the merger, however, the fire coverage in Stamford was not without problems. Last year, a Long Ridge firefighter complained to the state that he sometimes responded to calls alone. And though tensions between career and volunteer firefighters have come to a head since the merger, they existed years before the consolidation plan was announced.
At the Springdale Fire Department, the firehouse has been staffed by both city firefighters from Stamford Fire & Rescue and volunteers since 1997. The city runs a 16-man engine company out of the firehouse, and a volunteer chief remains in operational control of the station.
Springdale volunteer Chief Shawn Fahan said some city firefighters leave piles of shoveled snow before the volunteer firefighters' entrance and mislead potential volunteers when they call the firehouse. Fahan tried asking a judge to remove city firefighters from his firehouse in 2003 because of insubordination.
The strained relationship is hurting fire coverage, he said.
"We had guys that left the volunteer system because the tension with the career firemen was just not worth it," Fahan said. "They become confrontational."
He compared the career and volunteers to "oil and water."
"They have they're own agenda," Fahan said. "We have ours. We're trying to be community-oriented and help out our neighbors. Unfortunately, we don't have enough resources to be heavily volunteer."
With different training standards and union ties for volunteers and paid firefighters, relationships become strained, said David Finger, director of government relations at the National Volunteer Council, a nonprofit association that lobbies for volunteer firefighters.
"You get the volunteer department that's been around for 100 years and it's being phased out, and they're bitter," Finger said.
Most departments contain both volunteer and paid firefighters, he said, but having career employees means volunteers are likely being removed. Also, some paid firefighters tend to look at volunteers as scabs taking away dues-paying union jobs, he said.
The union in Stamford, the Professional Firefighters Association, represents 280 professional firefighters. Union President Brenden Keatley said he sees a role for volunteers but that it lacks definition.
Keatley said struggles between the city and volunteer firehouses come down to control.
Turn of River President Aaron Lee said Keatley's efforts to discredit volunteers goes too far. At a community forum on fire coverage in North Stamford this month, union members sat in a group and scoffed at statements made by volunteer chiefs.
"We're not in the days of Jimmy Hoffa anymore," Lee said. "If you're going to be in a union and make forward progress, you have to play corporate management politics. It's not, 'I'm going to intimidate them.' "
From a union management perspective, consolidation plans increase union dues and membership if more paid firefighters are hired to staff former volunteer departments, Dunn said.
"The union member gets caught in between," he said.
Consolidation plans create efficiencies for taxpayers and city officials, Dunn said. To volunteer firefighters, however, consolidation plans mean a loss of power, he said.
Nationally, the volunteer system is in transition, Dunn said. City governments are trying to regionalize all types of services, and fire protection is no different, he said.
"It's the same as globalization," Dunn said. "People lose their jobs in globalization. This is the same thing in a smaller venue."
Whatever the resolution, Dunn said volunteer and paid firefighters will most likely work together again.
"Once the city government opened up the floodgates, everybody picked sides," Dunn said. "That's what is driving the anger."
- Staff Writer Jeff Morganteen can be reached at jeff.morganteen@scni.com or 964-2215.