DC’s lame duck fire chief wants to remove ladder truck & engine company to turn busy firehouse into EMS station
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How likely is it that a lame duck fire chief with little or no support in the City Council, and who is so controversial every candidate for mayor except his current boss said they would fire him, will be able to make a major policy change impacting how his department does business?
Normally, you would say no way. But this is DC and you never know.
It’s the same city that hired Kenneth Ellerbe to be chief in January of 2011, despite a less than transparent arrangement from the previous administration allowing Ellerbe to be fire chief in Sarasota County, Florida while still listed on the rolls as a deputy chief in the Nation’s Capital.
After these allegations that Ellerbe was gaming the retirement system, I was convinced the City Council would try to prevent Ellerbe from being chief. I was wrong. No one even tried.
Because of that, I hesitate to predict the City Council will stop Ellerbe’s latest scheme. The chief wants to remove a ladder truck (Truck 4) and engine company (Engine 6) from the firehouse at 1300 New Jersey Avenue, Northwest and replace them with ambulances.
Also, in the video below, there is a brief mention at the top of the 1990s news story of a deadly fire two blocks from Engine 6’s firehouse on a day the company was closed due to budget cuts. It happened on December 26, 1995 at 7:30 p.m. after a fire was set at 1301 1st Street, Northwest. Engine 6 was down because of rotating closures and the second due engine was on a medical local. Truck 4 arrived first. But under Chief Ellerbe’s plan, Truck 4 wouldn’t even be available. Forty-six-year-old Thomas Shelton died of smoke inhalation in that fire. As I recall, the video of the fire was shot by my old friends Bill McKnight and Denny Blye.
You can read more about the fire and the troubles of DCFD in the mid-1990s in this article by Julie Wakefield. Keep in mind though, that the problems in the 1990s were often money driven because of serious budget difficulties for the city. The latest issues aren’t about money, but are driven by the agenda of Chief Ellerbe and his bosses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOOAqSrOKfk
Here are the details from Paul Wagner at WTTG-TV/FOX 5:
D.C. Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe has come up with a new ambulance redeployment plan. It is now under review by the D.C. council, which has scheduled a public hearing for Friday.
The last proposal was so controversial, every lawmaker voted against it.
The new strategy may create just as much fuss with plans to take the firefighting equipment away from neighborhoods that are growing by the day.
Chief Ellerbe will be the first to tell you the job
of firefighter has changed considerably in the last several years. There are far fewer fires and so many more calls for EMS. In fact, the chief says 80 percent of the calls for service are now for emergency medical services.
In order to handle that, the chief says he has come up with a new strategy that will add ambulances in the city, but leave the Shaw and Mount Vernon Square communities without a truck and engine.
The first thing you need to know about this proposal is that there are no plans to close the firehouse on New Jersey Avenue.
The chief says it will still be staffed around the clock, but the engine and ladder truck and the firefighters who staff them will no longer be stationed there.
“We know that we need more EMS coverage in the city and that’s an area that we feel has a centrally located station that allows us to deliver much better EMS care throughout the city,” said Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe in an interview Thursday. “Now we still have to talk to the neighborhood about that.”
Instead of the ladder and engine, the chief’s strategy would be to staff several ambulances and medics in the same firehouse.
It is a plan the chief says makes some sense.
“That facility is close to New Jersey Avenue, Florida Avenue, the freeway so we can provide resources to Northeast, Southeast, Southwest and parts of Northwest from that fire station,” Ellerbe said.
But as you can imagine, losing a ladder truck and engine has the community concerned.
Rachelle Nigro is the local ANC commissioner.
“I need to know the parameters,” she said. “In terms of the boundaries and the existing firehouses that will serve the community, the timing of when a call happens, when will they get there, I think that’s important.”
Commissioner Nigro says in the last day or so, many of her constituents said they wanted the ladder and engine to stay.
As for the firefighters union, President Ed Smith says they intend to fight it.
“Yes, absolutely,” Smith said. “I mean, literally when I say seconds count, seconds count. We are in the business
Just over a year and a half ago, Smith says that same ladder truck was used to rescue residents of a nearby apartment complex. It was a fire so intense, it burned the top of the ladder.
In the chief’s last proposal — the one voted down unanimously by the council — all of the medic units would have been taken off the street after midnight.
The new plan would add ambulance resources and keep them staffed around the clock.
