Report: Mass. FD Meets EMS Needs, Lacks on Fire Responses

March 14--TRURO -- The town may have moved back Thursday from a firefighting precipice.

With only a half-dozen firefighters available regularly, the town's ability to put out fires is severely compromised, and not up to standards residents and property owners believe it to be, according to a consultant's report presented Thursday evening to the board of selectmen.

The report, written by Municipal Resources Inc. of Meredith, N.H., represented the findings of a local fire and rescue task force appointed by the selectmen in concert with a consulting team led by Ed Walker.

The town is well-covered for medical emergency services and has provided the fire department with ample equipment and a very good public safety facility, the report stated. But staffing, training documentation and overall administration of the paid, on-call fire department are lacking, and there is a lack of focus overall on firefighting capability, according to Walker.

"We need to do something now," task force member Thomas Roda told the selectmen. Task force member Dan Silva urged the selectmen to act quickly.

As of May 14, 2013, voters changed the oversight of the fire department from a longstanding volunteer board of fire engineers to the selectmen.

The selectmen, on Thursday, responded with unanimous votes to hire a part-time, temporary fire department administrator to help Interim Fire Chief Brian Davis for the next six months to a year, using existing money. The board voted to accept that a permanent full-time fire chief is needed, a person who might be expected to be in place by the end of the year. In budget talks in the next two weeks, the selectmen will also discuss funding the report's recommendation that the town pay to have two certified firefighters on call at all times.

Currently, Davis is the one certified firefighter that can be relied on to respond to a fire, according to comments made at the meeting.

The report does not recommend that the town create a full-time fire department but instead says that the call volume in Truro could be handled by a "well-organized on-call fire service organization."

Truro is the smallest town on the Cape, and the only department that relies solely on on-call staff. There are typically one or two structure fires in a year in Truro and a half-dozen or fewer brush fires, fire Capt. Shannon Corea said Thursday.

The dire state of the town's firefighting capability has been coming on for several years, with the selectmen increasingly fielding complaints from residents that not enough firefighters show up for calls. There has been volunteer fire department management infighting as well.

In older times, the department had more than 40 people on its on-call roster. The decline in staff may be driven by factors that affect more than Truro, according to Walker, such as people holding more than one job, employer lack of understanding of community service and increased firefighter training requirements. There is also low morale in the department right now, some said at the meeting.

"I think you have a large group of people," Silva said of workers in town now who could be interested in firefighting.

The selectmen said they will explore ways to offer incentives to entice potential firefighters to the job.

Near the end of the meeting, Davis asked if he should "pack his bags," and he said he has only 18 months until retirement. Selectmen Chairman Jay Coburn told Davis he would be treated fairly for his long service.

Copyright 2014 - Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.