At the Aug. 6 Lompoc City Council meeting, Mayor Jenelle Osborne requested a “public safety and infrastructure report.” This is critical, as you will see below.
Firefighters need reliable and safe equipment to not only get them to your emergency promptly, but also to remedy the situation they have been asked to help with. In Lompoc, “reliable and safe” are becoming questionable due to years of neglect.
When our fire chief was a young firefighter working for the county fire department several years ago, they viewed the new fire equipment in Lompoc with envy. When he was hired as the Lompoc fire chief, the city manager quipped, “Well, you’re in luck, the same equipment is here today.”
Fire equipment and fire stations, like everything else, have a design life. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standard for fire apparatus stipulates 15 years before a unit is retired to reserve status, and at 25 years it needs replacement.
Fire trucks, unlike commercial trucks, make many short trips each day, which is the hardest kind of service any vehicle can have.
In Lompoc, the fire fleet is aging; the two primary engines are 11 and 17 years old; the reserve engine is 21 years old; and the ladder truck is 27 years old. The 17-year-old engine was overhauled last year but is currently out of service for electrical problems. And, the 11-year-old engine temporarily went out of service for mechanical reasons while responding to emergencies in recent days.
One brush truck is 28 years old (it was purchased after being retired from the county fire department) and the other, which is currently out of service for mechanical reasons, is 5 years old.
So, that means that of the three engines—two brush trucks and the aerial ladder—only one engine and one brush truck are suitable for frontline service.
Fire trucks can’t be bought off the shelf; the requesting agency must develop a set of specifications, and then those specs will be put through the standard procurement process. Under optimal conditions, design can take six months and an additional contract build time of up to 12 months after a contract is awarded before it will get to Lompoc, depending on the workload of the manufacturer.
Most cities plan for the retirement of their firefighting fleets by amortizing replacement costs for each newly acquired fire vehicle in every year’s budget so eventually they can meet NFPA replacement standards. It wasn’t until the most recent budget that the management services director indicated that some funds were being earmarked for replacement of one unit.
New fire equipment is expensive. Engines, the workhorse of the fire department, cost between $500,000 to $600,000; an aerial ladder $1.4 million; and, brush trucks are $400,000. That’s why it’s imperative to budget every year for future replacements.
The adopted 2019-21 budget describes the mission of the Fleet Maintenance Division as “to acquire and maintain a fleet of vehicles and equipment that will meet the needs of the individual departments while focusing on safety, efficiency, and ease of operation.”
I asked the city manager if any funding had been identified in the 2019-21 budget to replace equipment or fire stations; “nothing yet” was the answer. Meanwhile, in neighboring Santa Maria, fire equipment and firefighters are being added. Apparently, they have a much more responsible City Council.
The division has a huge task of maintaining 386 vehicles of all types and sizes. The 2019-21 budget does not include any new fire equipment or any other vehicles. Apparently, their budget does not allow them “to acquire” a fleet of vehicles that will meet the needs of the individual departments as evidenced by a failure to meet fire equipment replacement timelines.
The live/work fire stations have problems, too. At Station 1, last renovated in the 1970s, the upstairs shower can’t be used because it leaks into the battalion chief’s office. Some floor joists have been strengthened due to cracking, and it doesn’t meet seismic standards for a fire station.
Fire Station 2, built in 1985 as a “temporary” station to serve the north end of town, needs to be relocated because it isn’t strategically located to meet NFPA standard response times to service calls. Public buildings cost money, and a new station proposed a couple of years ago was well within the nationwide cost average for fire stations of its size, but it was shot down by three politicians who objected to the cost.
Cancer is the No. 1 killer of firefighters, and there isn’t an appropriate exhaust system for diesel fumes either, thus further jeopardizing firefighter safety due to carcinogens that are contained in the fumes.
A recent request for funding to modernize Station 1 was denied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which wrote that simply modernizing the station wasn’t cost effective; it needed replacement.
The fire department has been shortchanged in the budget process when it comes to facilities and rolling stock for several years. Some council members think that they can provide free government services and have strongly advocated “cutting spending.” But this is a “penny wise and pound foolish” strategy.
A change of philosophy is badly needed, or the fire department will be unable to perform its mission of “providing the highest level of emergency services and community risk reduction safeguarding life, property, the environment, and economic vitality.”
Ron Fink is a resident of Lompoc. Send your thoughts to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 15-22, 2019.