New City Budget Cuts May Mean Fewer Firefighters

On Saturday, members of the Los Angeles Fire Department will shave their heads at a station in North Hollywood to raise money for kids with cancer. That kind of close shave doesn't bother them.

Of far more concern to firefighters like Capt. Wayne Tomono of  Chatsworth's Fire Station 96, is a close shave prompted by Los Angeles budget woes, one that stems from more reductions in the number of firefighters throughout the city. That would leave the department unprepared to deal with a major problem like an earthquake or a large brush fire.

At Fire Station 96 in Chatsworth, for example, there used to be an aerial truck company and an engine company on duty around the clock. Now, as part of a rolling system of brownouts that require daily closures, there's either one company or the other but not both.

The Chatsworth situation is a reflection of  what is happening throughout Los Angeles. The city authorized positions for 3,588 sworn firefighters but about 400 have been deliberately left vacant. The number of civilian employees has been reduced from 438 in 2008 to 344 today. In the last several years, the fire department budget has been cut by 12 percent.

Put another way, in 2008, at any given time, there were 1,073 firefighters on duty. Last year, the average plunged to 931.

Capt. Tomono, who has been based at Chatsworth for three years, said he's never seen anything like it in his 33 years with the department.

"If you are a resident of Chatsworth, you'd rather have our normal staffing every day as opposed to what we're doing now because you don't want a test case where you have a big incident. Or maybe there's an incident in North Hollywood where all the companies are drawn there and this area is not covered."

So far, he said, there has not been an incident in Chatsworth that was aggravated by the reduced level of staffing. Partly this is because a central dispatch system, downtown will move other companies into Chatsworth if companies based at the station are called to handle an emergency.

But Los Angeles has been lucky, Capt. Tomono said. Even though the number of calls to the city fire department has gone up from 731,828 in 2008 to 795,693 last year, firefighters have not had to deal with out-of-control brush fires or earthquakes of the magnitude of the Northridge quake of 1994.

If, however, Los Angeles responds to its current $400 million deficit by trimming more fire department positions--which is entirely possible considering that 70 percent of the general fund goes for police and fire services--the risk grows ever higher. "How thin we can go, I really couldn't tell you," he said.

Even without additional cuts, a major disaster would sorely test fire department capabilities. If the Northridge quake happened today, Capt. Tomono said, "we would be as prepared but, with reduced staffing, it would be more difficult. We do have mutual aid statewide but this (reduced staffing) just makes it more difficult."