Second in a series
Re “‘We Are a Lean Department,’ Chief Sellers Says of Overtime Bill”
Even though the Fire Dept. is staffed at the same level it was 42 years ago, “a lot has changed in our business since 1970,” Chief Chris Sellers says.
“We not only have gotten much busier, with a lot more emergency calls, we have a second ambulance in service we didn’t have then with those same numbers of people.”
The department’s mission dramatically has changed in the last four decades. Fire calls have slipped from the focus to 6 percent of emergency cases.
“When I first was hired in January 1984,” Mr. Sellers said, “we would go to a hazardous materials incident, and that meant you pulled an engine half hose right off the rig and you washed it down a storm drain.”
Diversification is perhaps the most defining change.
Being a firefighter “has become much more complex. Weapons of mass destruction were not around. We do swiftwater rescue differently, technical rescue differently. Our paramedic program has expanded tremendously.
“Our rescues transport to hospitals and specialty centers out of the city more often than they are here. Sixty percent of our ambulance transports are out of the city now.
“Back in the ‘70s, our calls would run 1100. Now we get nearly 4500 calls a year.
“When people understand that,” said Mr. Sellers, the $1.5 million in overtime that the newspaper on last week for the calendar year 2010 might make sense.
“The average person, when you talk about making reductions, we picture governmental agencies as big bureaucracies, you know,” Mr. Sellers said.
“Bloated. Gross. Fat. It could be trimmed, people think.
“I share that with people because I do think a lot of people believe that.
“Oftentimes,” Mr. Sellers conceded, “that can be true.
“I am only talking about the Culver City Fire Dept. I don’t see us that way. Our staffing, when I got hired, we used to have four people on an engine company in ’84. Now it is three.
“In the last 15 years, the department has put forward to the city reports about our staffing challenges. It challenges the need for more resources, not only for out in the field but here in the office.”
(To be continued)
