A fire station in Arlington County, Virginia, is dealing with repeated brownouts, and these aren’t the kind caused by the power company.
In this case, a brownout means there aren’t enough firefighters available to run an engine or fire station. It’s been happening in Ballston.
“For two weekends in a row we’ve had situations where they’ve had to take engine companies out of service,” said Brian Lynch, president of the Arlington Professional Firefighters and Paramedics Association. “Neighborhoods in Arlington don’t have their first arriving engine company. Whether it’s a house fire or medical emergency, in our business, time can impact lives and property.”
The most recent example occurred Sunday into Monday, when an entire fire engine was taken out of service from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. due to personnel shortages, according to a statement from the office of Arlington’s fire chief.
“The Arlington County Fire Department, like many of our public safety partners in the region, are dealing with staffing shortages. The department is exploring many options to reduce the overall number of vacancies,” the statement reads.
The reason for the brownouts is a lack of firefighters, which the union blames on a pay scale that is not competitive with the market around Arlington.
The department has a number of vacancies that are not being filled and they are losing current firefighters to attrition at higher-than-average rates.
“I’ve been in the fire department for 22 years now and this is the first time this has ever happened where we’ve actually closed an engine company due to staffing,” said union Vice President Dustin Drumm, who said he’s concerned about the future. “So, if someone has a heart attack at a restaurant in Ballston, there’s going to be a delay. This is the beginning of closing engine companies, closing fire stations.”
To make up for some of the staffing void, the department has seen almost five times the mandatory overtime this year compared to the same time last year.
“When firefighters end their shift and there’s not enough people to relieve all of them they have to stay for 12-24 hours, potentially, of additional overtime,” Lynch said. “Some of our firefighters are working 60-72 hours straight.”
Lynch also pointed out that all that overtime is costly, at time and a half. If the county were to adjust the pay scale to make it more enticing for new firefighters to come onboard, they could save on all that overtime pay.
Lynch said there have been positive discussions with the county manager about making changes to the pay system, to hopefully recruit new firefighters and keep those already on the job. But, the discussions so far are short-term solutions. To turn the current tide, he said it will take a long-term solution that takes into account the pay rates in the market as well as the cost of living in Arlington.
“To get to the position that we used to hold in the labor market, you need to probably do a 20% pay increase,” Lynch said.
WTOP reached out to Arlington County for comment on the situation.
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