Fire Starter

Emergency crews, most often, reach victims in an average of four minutes. But what happens when that emergency team doesn't get there in time?

Although there is no concrete evidence that deaths have resulted from delays by Glendale firefighters and paramedics, former Pasadena Police Chief and longtime Glendale resident Bruce Philpott is leading a vocal and growing band of residents in demanding policy changes that he insists are not only cost-efficient but also potentially life-saving.

In a nutshell, Philpott and his supporters believe Glendale can save $15 million a year and improve response times and overall efficiency by cutting four-person fire crews to three people and restricting some of the activities performed by firefighters that are not emergency-related.

"In discussing this I'm addressing the issues of policies, and I'm in no way making any kind of negative connotations to impugn the reputation and integrity of Glendale's firefighters," Philpott said recently. "But in examining some policies, there are ways to dramatically improve services that mean life and death literally."

Some people aren't as convinced, one of them being Glendale Fire Chief Don Biggs, who said any reduction in staffing would be a recipe for disaster for residents of Glendale, with its unique mix of hilly and brushy terrain, traditional residential dwellings and high-rises in its business districts.

"Sure, any reduction to three-man teams would result in savings," Biggs said. "But, unfortunately, that reduction in cost comes at a tremendous risk to citizens of Glendale, and the City Council has not wanted to increase the risk to citizens brought by this proposal. ... Reducing [fire truck] manning results in higher safety risk to personnel, citizenry and everything else, and a lot fewer fire activities benefiting the city. You save money but get a lot lower level of service."

But Philpott is not to be dissuaded. He is so ardent about his cause that he delivered a nearly hour-long presentation on the issues at successive Glendale council meetings. Because public comments are limited to five minutes per person each week, he stood before that governing body for 11 weeks straight and delivered his take on the state of the city's overall safety.

If nothing else, some council members were listening. "If he has some valid points ... then they deserve to be looked into," said Glendale Mayor Ara Najarian. "However, fire safety is one of the most vital services a city can provide, and we have to be fully aware that such changes will not compromise the safety of any of our citizens," Najarian added.

Bad idea

Philpott is no stranger to criticizing fire departments, including Pasadena's. In May 1997, six years following his retirement after 28 years with the Pasadena Police Department, Philpott proposed a plan that called for the replacement of the fourth person on the standard fire crew with a volunteer.

The goal, Philpott and a band of supportive homeowners called the Committee for Fiscal Solutions argued, was to save the city of Pasadena $2.7 million annually, and at the same time give volunteers valuable experience in the field.

"From a practical standpoint, reserves are comparable to regulars, especially when they get the same in-service training and experience," Philpott told the Weekly at the time.

The idea didn't get very far with the City Council, however.

Paul Little, who is now the CEO and president of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, called Philpott's Pasadena plan "the stupidest idea I've ever heard."

Part of Little's concern at the time was over a component of Philpott's proposal to pay reserve volunteers $50 per 24-hour shift.

"For two bucks an hour, I'm not going to expect anyone to show up, let alone run into a burning building." Little told the paper. "Can you imagine facing someone who lost a loved one or something really valuable and saying to them', I'm sorry, but we were trying to save money by using volunteer firefighters.' I don't think so."

Much like his complaints about the Glendale firefighting force, Philpott's ire back then was aimed at the powerful firefighter's union, the Pasadena Firefighters Association, Local 809. He blamed much of the city's fiscal woes at the time on what he called excessive overtime for firefighters. And in that respect, Glendale is apparently no different, in Philpott's view.

Philpott points out that the Glendale Fire Department's budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year was $63.2 million, with $6 million of that figure going to overtime pay. Those figures have soared in the past six years, up from $1.6 million for overtime in 2001-02, according to city financial records that are available online.

Records for 2006 also show that 129 fire personnel earned more than $100,000 that year, with two fire captains and the fire chief making more than $200,000.

"It's all about salaries and overtime pay," said Philpott. "But if we're paying so much for their services, then we have a right to look at how fast they're responding, how much overtime they're doing and if they need all the people they have."

This is not a drill

At the heart of Philpott's concern in Glendale is the department's exercise policy, which allows firefighters to pursue fitness activities outside their stations during their shifts. Philpott believes this creates a risk that the teams will respond outside of golden time. He offers as evidence logs of the response time of 20 random fire calls, some of which stretch beyond seven minutes.

Biggs, however, defended the department's exercise practices and its use of crews to promote the department at local schools and public events.

"First, our exercise policy for many years allows companies to go into the field and use out-of-station exercise sites. It's been in place many years. We've reviewed it and found in certain circumstances it resulted in extended service times, so we changed the policy to use in-field exercise sites in those cases," Biggs explained.

"We don't feel it has to be done in the field. But all other types of activities, including training, inspection sites and public education and information sites - fairs, school events - all the things we do that's so important to reaching the public, can affect response times positively and negatively. We could as easily have a call that's closer to where the company is located at an event than one that's further away. Overall, we will still direct teams to be out in the field for events and exercise." 

Philpott responded by taking special issue with the school appearances. "I've asked [the Fire Department] if there are any studies that show any effectiveness of education of students who come out and climb around on fire trucks. The kids climb around and the firemen take out the hose and demonstrate the pressure. What happens at that moment when a full-arrest heart attack comes into their district? They have to get kids off the vehicle, turn the water off, repack hoses and respond from an elementary school playground. All this adds minutes to emergency responses."

Noting that the Glendale Fire Department had more than 300 requests last year from the Glendale Unified School District to perform educational events, Philpott said "We'd get increased service if they adopted my policies." He challenged the Fire Department to show "any studies that show any value to the kids? They said no, they don't."

Philpott, meanwhile, used the Mary Ann Pentz Study out of the USC School of Medicine School of Prevention Research to compare the educational activities of firefighters with the Pentz analysis of police involvement with the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program. "It indicated they're of no value unless you have booster classes periodically to reinforce the education over and over in a child," Philpott said.

"One can only conclude that [these appearances] are just a big PR campaign for the fire department. There's no value, especially for the person going into full arrest in the same fire district. If we were paying them $25,000 a year we might able to expect slow or misguided service, but we pay them enough to expect better," he said.

He pointed out that the department averages 14,000 calls a year, which comes to 4.4 calls for each of the city's nine stations in the average 24-hour period. Eighty-seven percent of those runs are medical backup calls assisting rescue ambulances in situations like heart attacks and strokes of single victims. "On a single medical backup call, why do you have six personnel - two paramedics in an ambulance and four more firefighters on an engine, with the red emergency lights activated 99 percent of the time?" asks Philpott.

Only 13 percent of local calls are actual fire calls. Nationally, according to the International Association of Firefighters, 93 percent of calls are false alarms, and across the board the calls average out to 15 minutes from the time trucks roll until the teams return to the station - meaning the typical shift is actually out on calls just one hour a day. 

That leaves the city with an average of five major fires a year, which Philpott acknowledged is a great figure that owes much to the various ways in which the Fire Department protects the city. But these statistics, while typical for a city Glendale's size, leave questions for Philpott and the followers he's attracted via City Council appearances and talks at numerous civic and homeowners organizations.

Dick Murray, president of the Chevy Chase Estates Association in Glendale, has been one of Philpott's most ardent supporters. Charged with keeping residents of the tony enclave in the city's hills informed about pertinent issues, Murray echoed Philpott's concerns in a phone interview.

"We live in a hilly area with a lot of narrow, winding roads, and fire is one of the major concerns in our area because we have a lot of trees," said Murray. "The city has allowed the continued building of homes and parking on both sides of narrow roads and, frankly, we're concerned that some of those big fire apparatuses couldn't get up here and fight a fire. We have been concerned that [the Fire Department] has not been appropriately concerned about these new developments, and we think that any time you want to add a home on the hillside with these small, narrow roads, you should consider how it'll affect the Fire Department," he said.

Further, Murray said, "We think that the Fire Department is very expensive and that a lot of the overtime is not necessary. Some of those fellows are just regular firemen - not captains or lieutenants - and they're making well into six figures. We think it's just being abused. They should be paid fairly but not $175,000 a year. But they have unions and they make contributions to councilmen's campaigns and so they get a raise every year."

Candidate Philpott

While Philpott has his supporters, he also has detractors, many of them firefighters who resent what they consider meddling in their business.

Among the choice comments he's received via email are "I would like to offer some advice to these men: get involved with a charity."

And this: "I have seen Mr. Philpott and he looks very ill" - someone wrote in an unsubtle and off-point swipe at Philpott's recent yet successful battles with cancer.

Then there's this gem: "YOU ARE A NUT! You spent your whole life wishing you were not a stupid cop so you tried to be a volunteer firefighter and found out you would never be A REAL FIREMAN. LOSER."

One Fire Department source who asked not to be identified suggested that Philpott's beef with the department doesn't stem merely from being a concerned citizen wishing to correct abuses. The source pointed out that Philpott once had political ambitions and said that he recalled the Pasadena Firefighters Association had thwarted Philpott's campaign for the state Assembly.

Philpott, however, has a ready answer for that accusation. "Yes, I ran for state Assembly, unopposed in the Democratic primary in 1994. No one prevented me. In fact, in Sacramento during my campaign, I sat at a $14,000 table paid for by the California State Firefighters Union as their guest during a tribute to then-Speaker Willie Brown," said Philpott.

"They didn't derail me. I ran against an incumbent and that was the time of Contract with America, when the Republican conservatives swept both houses. There wasn't one seated Republican state official defeated that year and no Pasadena Democrat was gonna do it either. I lost 52 to 48 [percent] and that's just 4 points, so I'm proud of the run," he said.

While Philpott advocates switching to three-person firefighting teams in Glendale, "I don't call for any reductions in firemen's benefits and compensation," he pointed out."I've always said they do a great job." 

Editor Kevin Uhrich contributed to this story.

Interested readers can email Philpott at logicpoint@aol.com or visit www.logicpoint.org for more information.