Kansas Local Campaigns to Improve Safety

July 20, 2007 – Wichita, KS Local 135 is taking an aggressive approach to convince City officials to make public safety a top priority with its “Save Our Fire Fighters” campaign.

Over the last 30 years, the City of Wichita, Kansas, has grown to become the largest city in the state, but the fire department has not grown with it. In fact, staffing has been reduced, making it nearly impossible for Wichita Local 135 fire fighters to respond quickly and safely.

The “Save Our Fire Fighters” campaign’s message that the fire department is too small to effectively protect the growing City if Wichita is splashed across television and newspaper advertisements, T-shirts, bumper stickers and on www.saveourfirefighters.org. Doug Pickard, president of Local 135, says. “We need to make sure that the public understands that everyone’s safety is at risk because of our depleted resources, and especially the lack of fire fighters.”

In just the first few weeks of the campaign, Wichita citizens have inundated City Council members with emails and phone calls urging them to provide the staffing, training and equipment the City’s fire fighters need to provide adequate protection

To meet national safety standards, Wichita needs an additional 160 fire fighters. Local 135 currently responds with three fire fighters per engine and two fire fighters per first responder unit. None of the four aerial trucks are staffed. If those trucks are needed, staff are moved from the first responder units to the aerial trucks.

“This is a serious problem, because in order to operate properly on the fire ground, we need three fire fighters according to the company that manufactures them,” says Pickard. “We are forced to operate these units with two personnel at the scene, a condition that is unsafe and fails to meet NFPA 1710 standards, which recommends four.”

Inadequate staffing has also drastically affected response times. “When I started in 1976, we were on the scene in three-and-a-half minutes,” recalls Pickard. “Now we’re lucky to get there in five-and-a-half minutes.”

Local 135 fire fighters hope the campaign will serve to educate citizens regarding current public safety issues and garner support for a binding arbitration referendum. As it currently stands, a mediator can be brought in if there is a contract dispute, but the City is not required to honor to the mediator’s ruling.