Gilroy
– Drive past Sunrise Fire Station and you’ll see it: a shiny,
cherry-red engine, a reassuring sight behind the station’s glass
garage doors.
Gilroy – Drive past Sunrise Fire Station and you’ll see it: a shiny, cherry-red engine, a reassuring sight behind the station’s glass garage doors.
But when fire strikes in northwest Gilroy, that engine sits idle, with too few firefighters to staff it. Instead, a rescue rig dashes to the scene – basically an ambulance equipped with rescue tools, a boom light and protective gear. It’s got everything, says one firefighter; everything except water.
That means that Sunrise depends on engines from Las Animas and Chestnut fire stations to douse local fires, tacking extra seconds onto high-stakes response times. Two weeks ago, when a three-alarm fire raged at Crest Hill Court, the first vehicle on scene was Sunrise’s rescue rig. Thirty seconds later, an engine from Las Animas arrived to drench the flames.
Thirty seconds: less time than it takes to floss your teeth, to boil an egg or to drive a city block. But as Scott Schipper watched fire lick through his neighbor’s roof, it seemed like a lot longer.
“I was surprised how long it took, from when the first car got there, to when they got water onto the fire,” he said, recalling the fire a week later.
Equipped with a rescue rig, firefighters can size up flames and find out who’s left inside, said Mark Ordaz, vice president of Fire Local 2805. On the vast majority of calls, which are for medical aid, they stave off death and mend injuries. But they can’t fight fires. For Sunrise firefighters, left waiting on an engine, “even a minute can feel like an eternity,” he said. Twelve times in 2006, the rescue rig was the first to arrive at a Gilroy fire.
Response times to Sunrise fires are higher than in any other Gilroy district, according to data compiled by fire analyst Dan Farnsworth. They haven’t gotten worse, said city administrator Jay Baksa – but they haven’t gotten any better, either. Meanwhile, more homes are springing up in the Sunrise district, the wedge of land north of Mantelli Drive and west of Kern Avenue.
“If I lived in that area, I’d be frustrated,” said Jim Blean, a Bay Area firefighter living in Gilroy. “They pay the same taxes as everyone else, and they’re not getting the same service … But I guess they see a big beautiful station, they see an engine, and they don’t know there’s only two people there.”
Until his neighbor’s house caught fire, Schipper didn’t know that Sunrise’s engine isn’t running, and hasn’t been running since the station opened in 2004. With only two firefighters, Sunrise can’t staff the engine, currently sitting in its garage. Gilroy firefighters have grappled with the city over how many staff can operate an engine, citing firefighters’ safety and the hallowed “two in, two out” rule: When two firefighters dash into a dangerous situation, two should be waiting outside, ready to rescue them. It’s a prized standard, dropped only in life-and-death situations. To protect their staff, a typical Gilroy engine is staffed with four firefighters.
But Gilroy’s fire union loosened that standard this year, agreeing to operate Sunrise’s engine with only three firefighters. The deal, part of a grueling nine-month contract battle, added three new positions to the fire department, starting this January. The plan would have put Sunrise’s engine on the streets this month.
“We’re trying to work with the city, to get the best level of service possible to the community,” said Ordaz. “So we’ll run this engine with three people, to help out.”
Then two Gilroy firefighters left town for jobs in San Jose in late December, and the plan unraveled. Suddenly short-staffed, the department had to shelve its plans for staffing Sunrise. For firefighters, the losses were “demoralizing,” said union president Josh Valverde. Now, it looks like the engine-that-could won’t be running until at least March, as the city works to recruit top-tier firefighters to fill those slots.
“Even if it might delay us a little,” said Baksa, “it’s worth the wait to get the best people.”
Last year, the city hired six firefighters from its 2006 eligibility list, a roster of the applicants who hurdle its tough tests and strict requirements. If the city can snag quality applicants from that list, said Baksa, the Sunrise engine could be staffed by next month. If not, the city is already recruiting new applicants, who face a gauntlet of tests and background checks before landing on this year’s eligibility list. Waiting on new applicants could delay Sunrise’s engine several months more: Chief Dale Foster says he hopes to see the engine at work by July.
“We’d love to have an engine out there,” said Ordaz, speaking for the fire union. “We’d love to have 10 engines, each staffed with four! But it’s not up to us – it’s up to the city to determine the level of service.”
With five firefighters’ salaries going unpaid, firefighter Blean wonders why the money couldn’t be spent on overtime pay, to get Sunrise’s engine rolling.
“The money they’re saving is enough to fill that position for quite a while,” Blean argued. “It’d at least give them some protection out there.”
But Baksa said Gilroy firefighters were already working overtime, and shouldn’t be stretched too far.
“You’ve got to be careful about how you use your employees,” he explained. “Our feeling was, we haven’t started anything new out at Sunrise yet – so let’s not create other [staffing] problems.”
Meanwhile, the rescue rig gets the job done – most of the time. On medical calls, it’s a literal lifesaver, reviving ailing Gilroy residents. But when fires ignite, it takes water to stop them, and for now, the Sunrise station remains dry.
