O.C. Fire Union Fights Volunteer System

By SHELBY GRAD and JEAN O. PASCO

July 11, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

The largest fire union in Orange County wants to eliminate the county’s century-old volunteer firefighter system, contending that it compromises the quality of emergency services.

Volunteers undergo minimal training and are not required to be emergency medical technicians--a special concern because 80% of all calls are for medical aid, union leaders say. They also argue that volunteers are sometimes slow to assemble and report for duty.

“The bottom line is that half of the firefighting force isn’t on the same level as the other half,” said Joe Kerr, head of the firefighters union, which has made the issue its top priority.

Managers of the Orange County Fire Authority, the agency that provides fire service for 19 of the county’s 31 cities, defend the long-standing volunteer, or paid-call, units, which make up about half of the department’s 1,400 firefighters and provide service at about a third of its stations. The volunteers, they say, still perform a critical “backup” function in local fire protection, and replacing them with full-timers would be impossible without a massive tax increase.

The Fire Authority says it currently spends about $2.8 million a year on salaries for its roughly 600 volunteer firefighters, or $4,666 a year per volunteer. That sum would pay for only about 31 full-time firefighters, leaving huge gaps in fire protection across the county. The union insists that the cost of the volunteer program is closer to $10 million when training is included. In any case, it would cost millions more to replace all the volunteers.

“Without volunteers, we lose a depth of service that’s so important to our residents’ safety,” said Capt. Scott Brown, the authority’s spokesman.

Orange County’s dilemma--which has bitterly divided the department--is part of a larger fight over the future of volunteer firefighting playing out in rapidly growing suburbs across the country. Fire unions are focusing greater attention on reducing--or eliminating--volunteer units.

“If you were to ask the average person who he wants treating him if he had a heart attack, the answer would probably be a full-time firefighter,” said Don Coffman, chairman of the fire technology program at Rio Honda College in Los Angeles. “The question is whether he is willing to pay for it. Going to all full-timers is very expensive.”

Tension Grows in Fire Authority

Nationally, about 75% of firefighters are volunteers. They are more prevalent in small towns than in urbanized areas, and most city fire departments long ago converted exclusively to full-time personnel. Los Angeles County has only one volunteer department, in the tiny town of Sierra Madre.

While volunteer units still operate in parts of Ventura and San Diego counties, the Orange County Fire Authority is considered one of the largest departments in the state to still use them.

The Assn. of Orange County Professional Firefighters began targeting the volunteer system this spring after resolving its three-year contract dispute with the authority.

Union leaders have pressed their case to top Fire Authority officials. If that fails, they plan to protest at City Council meetings and even hold rallies to express their concerns about the paid-call firefighters--the same tactics they used during the contract imbroglio.

The dispute is creating bad blood.

The most serious clash occurred May 22 when full-time firefighter Craig Durfee and a paid-call firefighter ended up in a shouting and finger-pushing match after a call, prompting the part-time firefighter to file a battery complaint with Tustin police.

“It’s very difficult. This whole thing is straining friendships,” said Mark Cochran, a 15-year volunteer firefighter in Mission Viejo. “These are the people we used to go on fishing trips with and invite to our homes. Now, there is this tension.”

Fire Authority officials faulted Durfee for starting the altercation and ordered him to take a month off without pay.

The Tustin situation also prompted County Fire Chief Charles “Chip” Prather to issue a memo last month stressing that the department has “zero tolerance” for “harassment and intimidation.”

Prather and other top authority officials said they still strongly support the paid-call program but concede that it can be improved.

Officials are now talking about offering more advanced medical and firefighting classes for volunteers and making such classes available in different locations around the county.

Brown said the department might also require paid-call crews to participate in additional hours of training.

One change already in place: new shields on fire helmets that more clearly differentiate between a paid-call and full-time firefighters.

The helmets for full-time personnel say “Orange County Fire” and state the firefighter’s rank. The paid-call helmets, however, also state the name of the community the officer serves (such as “Seal Beach” or “Tustin”).

“This is an effort to help the public distinguish between the two types of firefighters, and it goes back to the community-based roots of the paid-call program,” Brown said.

The roots run deep. Orange County’s volunteer fire companies date back to when the area was mostly agricultural.

As late as 1980, large parts of the county continued to be served by a patchwork of agencies including the California Department of Forestry and several volunteer departments from San Juan Capistrano to La Palma. The departments each had their own uniforms, fire chiefs, rules and traditions. In same cases, volunteers were welcomed aboard trucks with little training or experience.

The culture began to change in May 1980, when the Orange County Fire Department--the predecessor to the 4-year-old Fire Authority--was formed. It now provides fire service to 19 cities and unincorporated areas with a total population of about 1 million people. The rest of the county is served by individual city fire departments, which have exclusively full-time staffs.

Concerns About Reliability, Money

Under the authority’s current system, full-time firefighters are almost always the first to the scene of a call. In those cases, paid-call crews are summoned to back up the crew at the scene or staff the empty station. Paid-call crews do provide immediate response in a few mostly remote areas such as Silverado Canyon and Sunset Beach.

All new volunteers must receive 150 hours of fire training at a weekend academy for new recruits. Another 48 hours of training is required to handle basic medical checks, including taking vital signs, applying bandages and performing CPR.

Once firefighters join a paid-call crew, they must take 12 hours a month in “skills maintenance.”

But full-time firefighters require more extensive training: 560 hours as recruits, 100 hours to become certified emergency medical technicians and 20 hours a month for ongoing “skills maintenance.”

To union leaders, this training gap raises concerns about the quality of care the public receives.

“It’s a crap shoot,” said Kerr, adding that full-time firefighters don’t know whether they are going to be backed up by volunteers with equal medical training or those with less.

“We’re grateful for their contributions, but you just don’t know what you are going to get--nor does the public,” he said.

Another concern is reliability. It takes time for paid-call firefighters to get paged and report to the station for duty. They are required to live and work within a 3-mile radius of the station.

Sometimes, the paid-call crews cannot be assembled within a few minutes, and another crew has to be called in to either assist at the scene or staff an empty station.

One such incident occurred in Mission Viejo on July 5 when a house fire was reported, Kerr said. Two full-time engines, a truck company and a paid-call crew were dispatched at 4:04 a.m. All but the paid-call unit arrived on scene.

Fire Authority officials acknowledged that such delays do sometimes occur. But they stressed that the department automatically dispatches other backup units within three minutes if the volunteers cannot assemble.

Brown also said comparing the training levels is misleading.

“It’s like comparing apples and oranges. We have higher expectations for our full-time firefighters,” he said.

Leaders in most of the 19 communities served by the authority express strong support for the paid-call program and said they’d be hard-pressed to come up with the money needed to replace volunteers with full-timers.

Some officials in Westminster--which joined the authority three years ago--have raised concerns.

All stations within the city are full-time, but volunteers from the Midway City station sometimes are called into Westminster as backups.

In an effort to address the city’s concerns, the Fire Authority now tries to avoid sending paid-call crews into Westminster except during busy periods. A study by the department found that response times would rise 26% to 36% if only full-time personnel were used.

Some firefighters fear the divisions within the department will only grow.

“We only communicate for business purposes,” said Rick Van Auken, vice president of the union. “On the fire ground, we don’t let any of those things interfere, but the normal interaction around the firehouse has been curtailed.”

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On the Fire Line

About three-fourths of firefighters nationwide are volunteers. Volunteer numbers have declined since the early 1980s:

1996*: 838,000

* Latest data available

Small departments in rural areas tend to be overwhelmingly staffed by volunteers, who may or may not be paid for each call. The volunteer/full-timer split evens out in medium-size departments, and the largest organizations--almost all urban--are staffed almost exclusively by full-timers. The national breakdown for 1996:

*--*

Population Served Volunteer Full-Time Total Less than 2,500 427,900 6,750 434,650 2,500-4,999 168,400 5,900 174,300 5,000-9,999 110,950 13,800 124,750 10,000-24,999 74,550 41,900 116,450 25,000-49,999 24,650 35,900 60,550 50,000-99,999 14,500 36,800 51,300 100,000-249,000 6,200 36,200 42,400 250,000-499,999 2,900 25,400 28,300 500,000-999,999 7,750 25,400 33,150 1 million and more 100 32,800 32,900 Total 837,900 260,850 1,098,750

*--*

****

Volunteers in O.C.

More than half of the Orange County Fire Authority’s 61 stations are completely staffed by full-time firefighters. But 14 stations have a mix of full-time and paid-call personnel, and eight stations are strictly staffed by volunteers:

Mixed Stations (full-time and paid-call)

* No. 2 Los Alamitos, 3642 Green St.

* No. 7 San Juan Capistrano, 31865 Del Obispo St.

* No. 13 La Palma, 7822 Walker St.

* No. 18 Trabuco Canyon, 31242 Trabuco Canyon Road

* No. 19 Lake Forest, 23022 El Toro Road

* No. 21 Tustin, 1241 Irvine Blvd.

* No. 23 Villa Park, 5020 Santiago Canyon Road

* No. 24 Mission Viejo, 25862 Marguerite Parkway

* No. 26 Irvine, 4691 Walnut Ave.

* No. 29 Capistrano Beach, 26111 Victoria Ave.

* No. 30 Dana Point, 23831 Stonehill Drive