Looming Newburgh firefighter layoffs ignite safety fears
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
"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
It then received another
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."
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.
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
The use of unspent funds from the original grant pushed the layoff date into 2016.
With the aid of
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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