Local Reaction: LAFD Deployment Plan Shuts Down Northeast Fire Engines

One day after the city council approved a city-wide fire deployment plan, which will shut down 18 fire engine crews across the city, including some in Eagle Rock, Glassell Park and Echo Park, local firefighters said they are now focused on preparing to adapt to the new staffing levels.

"Of course, nobody ever wants to see any city service taken away. I live in this city and I don't like to see these kinds of reductions," said Captain Gene Bednarchik, who works out of fire station 12 in Highland Park. "The plan is the plan, though, and we're going to make the most out of it."

Tony Cardona, a Los Angeles Firefighter who has worked in stations across Northeast Los Angeles, said he was not in favor of the plan.

In particular, Cardona said there were safer alternatives to addressing the city's finanical needs, which would not require shutting down companies. 

"There were other alternatives to eliminate the modified coverage plan and to keep all these companies open," Cardona said in an e-mail to Highland Park-Mount Washington Patch. "One was to elliminate a firefighter from task force companies, so instead of 10 members, it would have nin.  The nine member companies were in place in the late 1990s and was a good, safe way to provide public safety and not compromising the safety of the rescuers."

No engine companies at Highland Park's station 12 have been shut down by the deployment plan, but Bednarchick said the staff reductions at nearby stations in Glassell Park, Eagle Rock and Echo Park will force his crews adjust how they respond to calls.

"Depending on what the staffing levels are around us, it will definitely have an affect on how we approach incidents," Bednarchick said.

The new deployment plan was created by LAFD leadership after studying three years worth of call data in an attempt to more efficiently deploy resources and to put an end to the universally unpopular modified coverage plan currently used by the city.

Through the modified coverage plan, a rotating scheduled of fire crews throughout the city are closed down each day and their staffs are assigned to backfill for firefighters who either out sick, on vacation or attending training. The plan was devised in 2009 to fight the department's high overtime costs.

Eric Garcetti, councilmember for CD 13, said the new deployment plan was superior to the brownouts because  it would eliminate the instability caused by the rotating brownout schedule.

Garcetti also argued that the new play deployed staff in a way that was more responsive to the city's needs. He stressed that the number of paramedic engine companies would be increased from 58 to 72 in response to the fact that 83-percent of the department's calls are medical in nature.

"This plan recognizes for the first time, at least in an intelligent way, that 83-percent of our calls our medical," he said.

The new deployment plan, which will go into effect on July 5 if Mayor Antonio Vilaraigosa's budget is approved, also comes packaged with assurances that staffing levels will be restored should the city's financial situation improves

"No one wants to be stuck in a place where we're at the lowest staffing levels that we've seen in a long while," said Ed Reyes, council member for CD 1, which includes Highland Park and Mount Washington. "So we want to be in a position that, through our administrative processes and our budget processes, we have an automatic mechanism that allows us to start restoring those resources and raising those numbers once the money starts flowing into our treasury."

Though he voted in favor of the plan, Councilmember Jose Huizar expressed reservations about the loss of four engine companies throughout council district 14, which includes Highland Park and Eagle Rock.

In particular, he questioned the methodology used by the fire department to determine which fire companies would be put out of service.

"There are a lot of qualitative factors that need to be accounted for and I would hope that the numbers do not wholly dictate how we distribute our resources," he said.  "There are topography issues, there are traffic issues, there are hillside issues, there are a number of issues that I hope this plan accounted for."

Further, Huizar question a particular aspect of the plan proposed by Garcetti, through which $6.9 million in hoped-for union concession would be redistributed to the fire department. He asked how the city would determine where those resources would go.

"Now that we have $6.9 million dollars, how do we redistribute those?" Huizar asked. "Is it going to administration? Is it going to resources? And, if it is going to resources, what parts of the district? Is it hillsides? is it congested areas?"

LAFD Chief Millage Peaks told Huizar that the department would determine which engines needed to be restarted using the same methods they used to figure out which ones could be shut down.

"We would need to go back in, reanalyze the data and determine in reverse order what resources need to be reallocated," Peaks sad. "This is a city wide issue, it wasn't determine by council district. It would be the same for reallocation."