Cash alone won’t fix department

Analysis shows addressing Detroit’s widespread deficiencies will take commitment plus money.

David Guralnick / The Detroit News Equipment woes were shown when the Squad 3 truck had to be pushed back to the station after it broke down in August.

By Melvin Claxton and Charles Hurt / The Detroit News, Copyright 2000

    Detroit Fire Department officials are banking on Mayor Dennis Archer’s promise Sunday to provide an open checkbook to fix their problem-ridden department.
    But fixing the department’s problems will take more than just money, experts and city leaders agree. Addressing deficiencies in three broad areas — equipment, staffing and management — would involve significant reforms. And it will mean dismantling an entrenched bureaucracy that has stymied repairs, slowed purchases of essential equipment and blocked communication between firefighters and the department’s top brass.
    Archer’s pledge came just hours after The Detroit News published the first of a four-part series on the Fire Department’s failings. The series linked at least 21 fire fatalities over the past four years to broken trucks and closed fire companies.
    The News found the policies of fire officials hampered rescue efforts and contributed to the deaths. These policies, which included closing stations because of low staffing and relying on broken equipment, didn’t change even after the tragedies.
    Detroit fire officials have already vowed to bring in an outside expert to revamp their operations. They also say they will buy more trucks, improve inspections, better train the drivers and look into farming maintenance work to outside shops.
    Other possible solutions are as simple as following widely accepted standards set by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the organization that sets operating guidelines for fire departments across the country.

Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News Lt. Greg Best, left, and Firefighter Don Rebain catch their breath after battling a fire at a vacant house on the 4100 block of Joe St. on Detroit’s west side.

    In putting together a list of possible solutions, The News interviewed experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal agency that conducts fire research; state and federal workplace safety regulators; firefighters’ unions, and reviewed firefighting manuals produced by a variety of agencies and organizations.

Equipment
    The Fire Department routinely sends broken trucks and defective equipment to fires. Many trucks are so poorly maintained that at least 25 of them missed runs this year because they wouldn’t start. Broken trucks played a critical role in an April fatal fire that left four people dead and a 7-year-old girl paralyzed. New trucks have been idled with defects. And even basic equipment like the gear firefighters need to battle blazes and city fire hydrants have been riddled with problems, The News series found. Among the possible solutions:
    INSPECTIONS: Merely following NFPA guidelines would require the city to have independent inspections of all ladder trucks and pumpers every five years. The pumps on the fire engines should undergo a rigorous inspection annually.
    Also, the Fire Department should have hoses and ground ladders inspected by an independent agency each year. Earlier this week, Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) regulators cited the Detroit Fire Department with 23 violations at the station that houses Engine 56. The alleged violations of state safety rules included the failure to inspect ladders, hoses and air tanks.
    The department also needs a rigorous schedule for air tank testing and make sure someone is responsible for making it happen. In recent press conferences Deputy commissioner Tyrone Scott blamed firefighters and their firehouse bosses for not reporting that air tanks that hadn’t been tested in three years as required by the state.
    But when Commissioner Wilson took office in January, he had a city audit of the department done months earlier that pointed out that air tanks weren’t being tested and there was a need to put a system in place to correct the problem.
    When state safety inspectors examined tanks at several firehouses last month, they found many still untested.
    THE REPAIR SHOP: The department doesn’t require any of its 30 mechanics to be certified by the state to fix cars, much less sophisticated fire trucks. The department must train mechanics to work on existing trucks and the new equipment that fire officials say they have ordered or intend to purchase. Repair shop welders, often asked to patch lifesaving equipment, must also be certified.
    The lack of certified mechanics and welders has hampered the department’s ability to fix equipment when it breaks.
    Fire officials should catalog and list all spare parts and replacement items in the repair shop. The shop does a poor job of tracking inventory and routinely runs out of spare parts and essential supplies. Storekeepers often can’t say what’s in stock and what needs to be ordered.
    The equipment at the repair shop — and facility itself — is in need of an upgrade. The facility lacks computers for diagnostic tests on new trucks, and has no working tow truck.
    The supply shop isn’t open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That complicates repairs at odd hours.
    The pace of preventative maintenance should be quicker. This year, fire companies have been closed for six hours or more at least 65 times because the repair shop was doing preventative maintenance on their vehicles. Making matters worse, the department often doesn’t have enough spare rigs to replace those in the shop for maintenance, and repair shop staffers lack the equipment to return trucks to service in a hurry.
    The shop has functioned for years with fewer than the number of mechanics and welders allowed under its budget. With a backlog of repairs and maintenance requests, the department needs to put enough repairmen in the shop to get the job done.
    BACK-UP FLEET: The department needs a full working fleet of rigs to serve as replacements when front-line trucks go down. During Angel’s night, Engine 59 in the city’s northwest side broke down. Its fire crew went without a truck for 22 hours. Because it lacks enough trucks the department often must close companies for hours and sometimes weeks, leaving entire neighborhoods without immediate fire protection. People have died in fires just blocks away from closed stations.
    PERSONAL ALARMS: Fire officials should provide more reliable Personal Alert Safety System alarms that go off when a firefighter collapses inside a burning building. Fire officials should also ensure that all firefighters wear them while battling blazes.
    HYDRANTS: The Detroit fire and water departments should better coordinate inspections for all of the city’s 30,400 fire hydrants. Instead of visual inspections done currently, more detailed checks of fireplugs should be done by turning them on to find out just how many actually work. Broken hydrants should be clearly marked so firefighters don’t waste precious minutes connecting to them in an emergency. All broken hydrants should be promptly fixed.
    RADIOS: The department should improve its ability to track its trucks on emergency runs. One way to do that is by installing Global Positioning Satellite computers on board fire trucks would allow dispatchers to track fire trucks through the city. Dispatchers would have th option of instantly knowing how far each truck away from its station is from a fire. Firefighters currently must manually alert dispatchers when they arrive on a fire scene. Hurried firefighters often forget to do so, leaving dispatchers guessing as to whether a unit has reached the fire scene. Department officials say they are exploring the idea.
    The department should also provide every firefighter with a working radio, preferably one attached to their air masks for easier use. Currently, only a fire crew’s leader has a radio. New radios given to firefighters should be waterproof.

Staffing
    Having too few firefighters on duty has forced the department to close fire companies 61 times this year, according to a Detroit News analysis of staffing figures. Besides increasing the number of firefighters on the job, fire officials should improve training of recruits joining the force. Among the possible solutions:
    INCREASED HIRING: The department has operated for years with fewer than the budgeted number of firefighters. The city fails to put enough men on its fire trucks to meet the minimum industry standard almost every day. Too few firefighters on trucks also increase the likelihood of injuries, NFPA experts say. And the high injury rate among Detroit’s firefighters has worsened the staffing shortage.
    DRIVER TRAINING: Fire officials should put drivers in a training program similar to that used to certify truck drivers. Trained drivers will cut down on accidents and also save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs and lawsuits. Archer on Sunday made this one of six points he plans to fix within the department.

Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News Lt. Greg Best appears exhausted after fighting a three-alarm fire. The department needs additional equipment and staff.

    SENIORITY: The department should work with the firefighters’ union to address the seniority-based system of promotions. The policy now allows the most senior firefighters to be promoted without regard to skills or performance. If firefighters are being promoted based on their length of service, the department should ensure that those being promoted receive special training for their new positions.
    HAZARDOUS MATERIALS TEAM: Fire officials should activate the hazardous materials, or hazmat, team by adding the medical surveillance staff needed to satisfy state and federal requirements. The hazmat unit should also receive monthly training to sharpen skills and familiarize team members with equipment.

Management
    Few people in the fire department are ever held accountable for their mistakes. Often their is poor communication between top management and the rank and file.
    This has led to a department where few things get fixed and few people are accountable. Among the possible solutions:
    COMMUNICATIONS: The department should improve its internal communications to ensure accountability. It must see that complaints from firefighters and requests for maintenance reach the highest levels of the department. Fire officials have insisted that they were unaware of numerous requests for repairs that The News found in journals, memos and maintenance request sheets.
    CENTRAL ALARMS: Detroit fire officials should install a citywide alarm system for dispatchers to alert firehouses of fires. The system firefighters now rely upon is prone to malfunction and doesn’t sound alarms unless firefighters jury-rig it to do so.
    STATE OVERSIGHT: The department must work more closely with state agencies in monitoring safety and other concerns. However, state officials should also increase their vigilence in investigating problems in the Fire Department. Even after a city auditor general’s report in September 1999 revealed the casings of air tanks used by firefighters during fires weren’t being tested every three years, MIOSHA failed to investigate.
    A state probe that found more than 280 bottles had not been tested came a year after the audit and followed repeated inquiries about testing from The News since February.
    The state should investigate the department’s tanker truck used to deliver fuel to fire trucks forced to pump for extended periods at major fires. The more than 30-year-old truck, which should be inspected every five years, has been inspected in more than a decade.
    State also has oversight over the department’s trucks to ensure that they are road-worthy. But state inspections are rare, and prompted usually by union complaints.
   

Contact the reporters at churt@detnews.com and mclaxton@detnews.com.