Fire chief: Overtime costs more than money

Carson City's firefighters increasingly fought fatigue and illness working thousands of hours of overtime last year - a practice the fire chief said needs to stop.

"I'm putting these people out on the street for these number of hours straight and they are making decisions that affect the health and welfare of the public," Chief Lou Buckley told city supervisors. "I can't recommend to you as fire chief of this community to continue this practice."

The fire department's request for seven new firefighters was granted Monday as part of the city's $47.5 million budget package. The additional staff is expected to ease the burden on firefighters and paramedics who racked up 33,000 overtime hours last year.

Buckley said he expects to hire the new staff in July at a cost of $465,000, which will be paid by using overtime funds, plus $46,000.

Supervisors approved the department's request but challenged Buckley to manage overtime in the future.

"My fear is, down the line, the overtime is going to start creeping up," said Supervisor Richard Staub. "It's going to be a challenge to try to control the overtime."

Mandatory staffing rules require the department to have 45 employees for full coverage of its three fire stations. Making allowances for annual leave, sick leave, workers compensation leave and employee turnover, the department needs 56.25 available personnel.

On average 3.9 positions are filled by employees on overtime everyday, Buckley said.

"When you start working people these kinds of continuous hours and these people are dealing with sick and infirm in the community, fatigue goes up and illness goes up," Buckley said.

Crews work in teams and are supported with safety checks and team members, but the effects of fatigue on decision making and safety are concerns, officials said.

The department still expects to pay $200,000 in straight overtime next fiscal year.

In 2003, firefighters worked three days overtime 274 times, were asked 29 times to work four days straight, 15 times to work five days straight and eight times worked six days.

Answering 6,000 calls a year, firefighters and paramedics rarely get a full night's sleep while on duty.

The department's average response to a call remains slightly more than 5 minutes, putting it shy of its goal of 4.5 minutes, Buckley said. The addition of staff is not expected to lower the response time, however.

"I don't believe this will have any impact upon response time at all," Buckley said. Extremely fatigued firefighters generally take more risks and get up and ready faster, but also are not as observant. "The speed goes up, but the quality of decision making goes down (with fatigued firefighters)."

Contact Jill Lufrano at jlufrano@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1217.