As investigators work to determine the cause of a fire that displaced a family on Howard Avenue, the firefighter’s union said the fire is shedding new light on the vulnerabilities in the department.
When fighting the fire in the basement of the home, some firefighters became disoriented and issued a mayday call.
Luckily, everyone made it out safely and the family evacuated upon smelling smoke, despite there being no working smoke detectors, the fire chief said.
Five surrounding fire departments provided mutual aid, from station coverage to responding directly to the scene.
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“Our staffing levels are very dangerous. We need mutual aid partners on any building fire that we go to. We rely on them very heavily because we don’t have the proper staffing to do our job safely,” said Ed Crandall, president of Southington Professional Firefighters IAFF Local 2033. “When I started nearly 16 years ago, we could handle a building fire by ourselves.”
Crandall said the town’s board of fire commissioners has been discussing make cuts to the department’s already lean staffing.
“It’s our understanding that there will be a reduction in services coming soon, the reason that is it’s a cost-savings measure. We have to send our new members to the Connecticut Fire Academy to go be trained, and that leaves vacancies that need to be filled. When we operate as lean as we operate when a member’s off, there’s an empty seat that needs to be filled,” Crandall said. “We should have a minimum of three people on every fire truck, and we should have staffed fire trucks available to respond to emergencies with short response times.”
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He said there’s also talks of closing a fire station. He said he’s not sure which one could be shuttered.
“As a cost-savings measure, the busiest company out of fire headquarters will drop to two members when the first member is off on leave,” he said.
Pointing to Thursday morning’s fire and the mayday call from crews, he said things could have been much worse than they were.
“Staffed fire trucks and quick response times save lives,” Crandall said. “Luckily, no civilians were hurt this morning. Luckily, my firefighters got out safely. This could have been a lot worse. We are not asking for a lot. We are looking to maintain what we have, and we want to protect the people who pick up the phone and dial 911.”
A meeting is set for Thursday, Jan. 2 at fire department headquarters on North Main Street where the cuts will be discussed. The meeting is open to the public.
“We wanna educate the public what’s going on with their fire department. We are understaffed, and they’re looking at cutting our staffing. So, we want the public aware, we want the board of fire commissioners to make the right choice and not reduce our staffing,” he said. “If people don’t want to lose their fire protection, they should come and speak.”
NBC Connecticut reached out to town leaders for a response to the union’s concerns but did not hear back.
