{"id":20427,"date":"2016-02-16T09:01:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T17:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/bethel-fire-chief-city-needs-more-firefighters\/"},"modified":"2016-02-16T09:01:58","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T17:01:58","slug":"bethel-fire-chief-city-needs-more-firefighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/bethel-fire-chief-city-needs-more-firefighters\/","title":{"rendered":"Bethel fire chief: City needs more firefighters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BETHEL \u2014<\/strong> The Bethel Fire Department is asking the city to fund two extra positions in response to a surge in alcohol-related calls.<\/p>\n<p>Fire Chief Bill Howell said the department is \u201cworking with the absolute minimum\u201d and needs the extra positions to prevent employees from getting burnt out, KYUK-FM reported. He also said a staff increase will be necessary with legal alcohol sales coming to Bethel for the first time in 40 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe feel there\u2019s a strong possibility that a package store in Bethel could increase our call volume,\u201d Howell said, \u201cand we\u2019d like to up-staff in anticipation of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Firefighters responded to 603 alcohol-related calls last year, an increase from 283 in 2006. Overall call volume has also grown, with more than half the department\u2019s calls related to alcohol since 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the increase, staffing levels remain where there were more than 20 years ago at six firefighters. The department has more than 30 volunteers.<\/p>\n<p>The National Fire Protection Association requires there to be at least three firefighters per engine responding to a fire. Howell said it is a challenge for the department to have two staff and one volunteer per truck. Usually one firefighter is on duty at a time, and the second firefighter and volunteer meet the truck at the scene.<\/p>\n<p>The crew also regularly assists the short-staffed police department and goes without janitorial or administrative help.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen fire fighters have to work 48 and 72 hours in a row for people taking vacations and having to constantly go on call on their days off to help cover staffing needs, I think it\u2019s a pretty safe assessment that they\u2019re being taxed further than what they should,\u201d Howell said.<\/p>\n<p>The department\u2019s request is supported by the Public Safety and Transportation Commission, which recommended the City Council fund the positions.<\/p>\n<p>The council is expected to address the issue at a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BETHEL \u2014 The Bethel Fire Department is asking the city to fund two extra positions in response to a surge in alcohol-related calls. Fire Chief Bill Howell said the department is \u201cworking with the absolute minimum\u201d and needs the extra positions to prevent employees from getting burnt out, KYUK-FM reported. He also said a staff [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20427"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}