Looming Newburgh firefighter layoffs ignite safety fears

Dec. 04--CITY OF NEWBURGH -- Before 2013, even a bedroom fire could prove disastrous for the City of Newburgh's undermanned fire department.

With just three guys to a truck, a single firefighter would have to unravel and deploy a hose line or deploy a ladder alone, often injuring their backs and shoulders.

"A lot of times that single bedroom fire would turn into two or three rooms," acting Chief Terry Ahlers said.

"Now, we're getting off the fire truck with 12 or 13 guys. ... We're putting these fires out before they get out of that room."

That is one of the improvements Ahlers fears will be lost after August 2018, when Newburgh lays off 12 firefighters whose salaries and benefits had been covered by a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that expires next year.

Newburgh received $2.4 million from FEMA's Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response program in 2013 to hire 15 new firefighters.

It then received another $2 million from the program last year to save the jobs of 12 men scheduled to be laid off as the initial grant ended.

The extra manpower from the grant, which allowed the department to raise its personnel level from 55 to 70, led to a quicker and more forceful response in which fires have been extinguished before buildings are totally lost, Ahlers said.

Injuries due to short staffing have been "pretty much eliminated" and more fire safety violations are being caught because the department has devoted more men and time to inspections, he said.

"We're accomplishing all this stuff and it's like, 'OK. Show's over. Everybody go home. We're done,'" he said. "And I think we've made a difference."

Newburgh gambled when it applied for and won the initial SAFER grant. Part of the hope was that a safer city would attract enough investment to be able pay for the new salaries itself when the grant period ended after two years.

The grant enabled the department to deploy four men per truck. With more personnel, the number of incidents in which the department had to call for additional manpower after the initial response fell from "20-plus incidents to less than 10 per year," Ahlers said.

"Before the building is beyond hope, we're putting the fire out," he said.

Newburgh's fire prevention efforts have also benefitted, Ahlers said.

At one time, two firefighters worked eight hours a day, five days a week.

Now the department has six firefighters undertaking inspections for 12 hours a day, six days each week, Ahlers said.

"The big joke was, you want to do renovations to your house, you want to have it wired without an electrician (or) put an addition on, wait until 4 p.m. or wait until Saturday," he said. "We're catching work done without a permit left and right."

Newburgh's gamble that it would be able to cover the cost of the new firefighters when the initial grant expired in 2015 was a losing one, and the city prepared to lay off 10 firefighters at the end of that year.

The use of unspent funds from the original grant pushed the layoff date into 2016.

With the aid of U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney's office, the city won a second SAFER grant worth $2 million gave Newburgh another full two years.

The fire department will apply for a third round of funding, but the odds are long.

"Nobody ever gets two rounds," Ahlers said. "Nobody's ever gotten three."

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