The San Carlos Fire Department has reached a critical stage. There are not enough employees to maintain even a minimal staff at both fire stations in town, forcing Fire Chief Jim Skinner and Deputy Fire Chief Stan Maupin to create a brown out at station 16 (on the Alameda) last week.
It could happen again soon if no solution can be found quickly.
The current 17 fire personnel have been pushed to the brink of danger because of overtime. Fire captains have been asked to serve as drivers.
"I wish I was here to give you better news but, actually, we're at a tipping point in staffing and managing the department the way it is now," Skinner told the San Carlos city council at its last meeting.
Skinner told the city council that a minimum of 24 fire personnel are required to run both stations. Of those 24, six are captains, 12 are firefighters/paramedics and six are fire personnel.
San Carlos currently has five captains, six firefighters/paramedics and six fire personnel.
"The reason we had the brown out last week was because we didn't have enough drivers," Skinner said. "It was a difficult decision to make."
San Carlos has received four resignations since last October's termination of the South County Fire Department, a coalition between San Carlos and Belmont. Two of them took jobs in Oakland, one returned to Belmont and one resigned out of the Fire Academy.
"We have to fill six spots," Skinner said. "Current employees are working way too many hours. We cannot sustain it. The personnel we have now are doing their best to make it work."
The brown outs occured on June 30 and July 4-6.
"It couldn't happen at a worst time of the year obviously," Skinner said. "We were lucky nothing catastrophic happened. As we brown out station 16 it affects other stations nearby because that company is used to cover other areas of the district if there is other events going on."
One solution offered was to have San Carlos city manager Jeff Maltbie open discussions with the Redwood City city manager to see what a full service contract would look like.
"This is an item that is of critical importance to city management," Maltbie said.
The simple solution is to hire more personnel, which is currently in the works. The best case scenario has all the positions filled by February.
Should the brown outs continue, response time would increase but Skinner could not provide an accurate level because of lack of data.
"If we could come to some agreement between San Carlos and Redwood City where we could share employees more than just one position at a time in an overtime capacity, but on a day to day basis to fill these roles then we could get through the next few months while we're crafting a new contract," Skinner said. "We could help each other but there's no mechanism to do that right now."
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