Recent fires cast light upon CCFR’s staffing shortages

“We look at ourselves as the city’s problem solvers for emergencies,” Cheyenne Sanchez, vice president of Juneau Career Firefighters, said. “With the recruitment challenges that we face, no one else is coming to help us.”

Early in the morning of Jan. 4, a home on Aspen Avenue was up in flames by the time firefighters arrived on scene. Sanchez said the incident caused the firefighter’s union he represents to reflect on their ability to serve the community.

After several hours of firefighting, Capital City Fire/Rescue posted a notice on its Facebook page: “This fire taxed Juneau’s resources with all on duty personnel and available firefighters conducting firefighting operations, providing emergency medical care and responding to additional calls for EMS.”

For years, CCFR has faced staffing shortages. In a testimony to the Juneau Assembly on Monday, Sanchez said they are pushing for higher wages to recruit and retain staff. He said this would allow CCFR to respond at the level the community of Juneau deserves. He asked the Assembly to consider internal wage alignments based on the merits of first responders’ work, lack of competitive wage within the region and the inability to staff critical response apparatus.

Deputy City Manager Robert Barr said city management negotiates wages every three years and is scheduled to do so in the coming months.

The fire on Aspen Avenue was deliberately set by a 33-year-man who then died in an adjacent room from a cause not related to the fire, the Juneau Police Department reported Wednesday. The three other people in the house were able to escape safely, but one man was seriously injured trying to reenter to find the person who died, according to JPD. JPD’s investigation revealed several pets also died in the fire and the house is considered a total loss. CCFR stated no firefighters were injured, and the investigation by JPD and CCFR is continuing.

A fire the same week in the Mendenhall Valley destroyed a trailer in Sprucewood Park. It began near the end of the Assembly meeting where Sanchez testified. CCFR reported the trailer had been unoccupied for some time and there were no injuries, except for a firefighter who hurt his back loading the five-inch fire hose in the back of a truck after completing the response. In an update on Thursday, Fire Chief Rich Etheridge said the trailer fire started in the covered porch area and was most likely caused by smoking materials, but the investigation is inconclusive.

Etheridge said CCFR currently has four vacant positions on a 42 full-time staff. Two paramedics left the department and the other two open positions come from part-time positions that were consolidated into full-time.

“It causes more overtime and more reliance on off-duty personnel and volunteer personnel to handle situations,” Etheridge said.

All of CCFR’s full-time employees are EMTs, according to Etheridge. A small group of the staff are also trained as paramedics.

The fire department has two staff stations: Station One, which is downtown, and Station Three, which is near the airport. Each station has a fire engine with a driver, operator or an engineer, and then a captain. In the Mendenhall Valley, CCFR has an ambulance that’s staffed with two firefighters who are also trained as EMTs or paramedics. Downtown, CCFR has two ambulances — Medic One and Medic 10. Two ambulances and two engines are considered the minimum requirement for the city, which is fulfilled.

Sanchez said the union is grateful for the city’s August 2018 intention of staffing Medic 10, the third ambulance, but efforts to do so with full-time staff have been unsuccessful.

He added that the union understands decision makers must balance many department budgets, but public safety is always a higher priority. He said for both fires this week, CCFR was unable to staff the third ambulance.

“Our downtown ambulance was immediately pressed with providing medical care and so that, again, just even further limited the amount of firefighters that were able to do initial response actions on the fire,” Sanchez said.

Etheridge said in the case of stacked medical calls that the third ambulance not being staffed can sometimes limit the number of firefighters available for responses. He said they try to staff Medic 10 as much as possible.

“If we have somebody call in sick or there’s somebody injured, what we have to do is not staff the third ambulance for that day,” he said.

In the fall of 2024, a compensation survey was completed by the City and Borough of Juneau, which was contracted out for CCFR. The union submitted a letter including an executive summary of the wage study in a letter to the city on Wednesday in preparation for contract negotiations. In the letter, Logan Balstad, president of the firefighter’s union, asked the Assembly to consider that CCFR’s salary range falls in the 20th to 25th percentile of the range of pay firefighters get regionally.

“Most of our members are less than 10 years on the job and our history of turnover suggests that we will continue to have the lower portion of the wage table utilized,” Balstad wrote. “In order to focus on recruitment and filling our 4 current vacancies (it’ll be 5 this spring when our senior member retires); we need to correct the starting wage.”

Balstad wrote in the letter that he collected data from the comparable cities listed in the study that also offer a paramedic level service.

“When we compare the other public safety department (JPD) against that market, we find that JPD has a recruitment wage at the 90th percentile of the market,” Balstad wrote. “I know that’s a huge ask. I know it can’t happen in one year. But it is what’s fair based on the merits of the work and service we provide the citizens.”

Sanchez said the union believes better wages would translate to better recruitment and retention for firefighters.

“When people who are looking for a firefighter job and they’re going to an online job posting, and they’re filtering by wage — we’re probably not even going to be on the first page of results,” he said.

Sanchez said over his 10 years at the department, he has noticed “we’re doing more and more and more with either the same or less amount of staffing.” He said they also have a higher risk of cancer and cardiovascular emergencies due to exposure to hazardous substances and the lack of sleep caused by their schedules. He said the union believes mandatory overtime should be used as a last resort, but it’s being increasingly required to meet minimum staffing needs.

“People are leaving for different schedules, more money, burnout,” Sanchez said. “We respond to the landslides, respond to avalanches and all these things that we’re doing; the river rescues, the flooding, all the things. We’re just asking for a little bit more help on that, because truly, our responder numbers are declining.”

• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz.garrett@juneauempire.com or (907) 723-9356.