Fire officials say OSHA making impossible physical demands on older volunteer firefighters
This article is part 2 of a multi-part series on the changes that are taking place to the existing federal Fire Brigades Standard.
BETHLEHEM and COLONIE -When the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s announced in February proposed revisions to 40 year old federal firefighter safety standards, it raised a five alarm fire among local volunteer fire departments. With new requirements for equipment retirement, training and physical qualifications, local volunteer fire departments predict the proposed regulations will damage volunteer recruitment and retention.
Proposed additional training mandates for line firefighters and command staff draw particular ire. Albany County Fire Coordinator Gerald Parish, Jr. said “Just to be a basic firefighter and to wear the black hat and ride the fire truck” training hour requisites will jump 68 hours to 197. Parish said the additional time commitment may cause recruits and current volunteer firefighters to “think I don’t have enough time to take 68 additional hours of training.”
Parish said training is given in 3 hour intervals, so additional training hours will significantly stretch out the time it takes to qualify as a firefighter.
Training prerequisites will also intensify at each command staff level. According to Parish, to become or remain a fire chief, the individual will have to be certified as a Fire Officer I (basic firefighting), as well as have additional training at Fire Officer 2 and Fire Officer 3 levels. Parish said he believes of the 42 Albany County fire agencies, only four chiefs are currently trained to the Fire Officer 3 level that the proposed regulations require. “If push comes to shove you could lose 38 fire chiefs,” Parish said.
“I have been in the fire service for 38 years and been a chief for six years, so what more are they going to teach me when all is said and done?” Slingerlands Fire Department Chief Craig Sleurs asked rhetorically. “They’ll give me a certificate.”
West Albany Fire Department Chief Daniel Sullivan said, “you can barely be a firefighter now. No way you can be a Lieutenant. This will lead to a loss of leadership.” He said he would “hang up his keys” if the regulations, as written, are passed. “I have given up enough of my personal life to my community. I love doing it, I’m happy to do it, but the services will be depleted and I’m not up for that. I’m not up to seeing my neighbor’s house burn to the ground because there’s no personnel.”
Selkirk Fire Department Chief Thomas Neri said all 12 Selkirk command staff officers would be disqualified to serve. He is concerned they will resign if forced to meet the new standards. “How do you survive without officers?” he asked.
Town of Colonie Fire Coordinator Michael Romano voiced an added concern about command staff training. Those classes are two weeks long and held at the State Fire Academy in Montour Falls, New York, 212 miles west of Albany. “Imagine telling your family that instead of going on a family vacation with you, I’ll be spending two weeks at Montour Falls without you or the kids and, oh, it’s all for free,” said Romano.
Impact on experienced non-command staff firefighters also runs high because some pre-2002 training will not qualify. “More senior firefighters will have to start training all over again.” Neri said. “Firefighters with years of experience will be sidelined.”
Romano said that will discourage recruitment and retention. Romano, who has 40 years experience and oversees paid and volunteer firefighters, said “we can’t get guys to do this for pay. Now they want me to bring in guys to do it for free and to tell them with 20, 30, 40 years of experience, what you did is not good enough and you have to start all over?”, he expostulated. “This is asking a lot of volunteer firefighters. It’s like going back to get another learner’s permit before you can drive,” he said.
Fire officials also fear the impact of additional training related physical requirements on long-time older firefighters. Parish said the proposed regulations require all interior firefighters to take Firefighter Assist Search Team training, which involves extracting a downed firefighter from a building’s interior. Currently, that training is optional. “There’s a difference between dragging a hose line and taking a firefighter in full turnout gear and dragging him out of a building. Even two people would have a problem with doing that,” Parish said.
Parish explained that requiring every interior firefighter to meet that standard will disqualify older, more experienced firefighters. “I’m not taking a 61 year old firefighter and telling him he has to meet the FAST standard. We can’t afford to lose that 30 years of experience,” Parish said. Sullivan agreed. His department has protocols for fire fighter extraction. “We have a very good balance. They’re trying to fix things that aren’t broken. I can’t tell an older firefighter to go breach walls and do FAST training. They can’t do it physically.”
No one spoken to objects to having rules to keep firefighters safe. “We do everything we can for firefighter safety,” said Sullivan. He questions whether the changes make a difference. “If everyone follows these requirements, will it change safety? I don’t believe it will. Maybe it will prevent a couple of heart attacks, but the reality is what it would do is not good at all. It will only compound the problems and make it worse,” Sullivan said. He opined the regulations themselves will increase firefighters’ stress. “People are only going to take so much when you have to work and have a family and will say I just can’t take this anymore.”
Firefighters objected to OSHA’s overreach. “OSHA is overstepping. It doesn’t seem to understand fire fighting. It’s an inherently dangerous occupation. They are overregulating. It’s bureaucrats coming up with policies and not understanding the problems they will cause,” Neri said. “I understand what they are trying to do, but the way they are going about it is very wrong because they are mandating how to do certain things and there can be many ways to accomplish the same thing.”
Several objected to the timetable. Parish said that although the changes may be 40 years overdue, the problem is OSHA “is trying to make 40 years of change in just two years. The changes are not achievable [for volunteer firefighters] within the timeline.”
Parish noted that the State does not have sufficient personnel to conduct all that additional training. He said his office has for months been looking into ways to meet the training requirements and to get the training done here in the County. He has had meetings with the NYS Department of Homeland Security to come up with a plan.
Sleurs agreed. “A lot of the changes are good changes, so I’m not saying they’re bad, but to put them all on at one time and make us do that [is a problem].” Sleurs also said that the regulations fail to take into account that many departments are already handling these safety issues in their own way or issues, like fatalities, have not occurred. “I think they’re trying to wear us out,” Sleurs said.