Chief: Hiring 14 firefighters good idea

By Ed Runyan | January 6, 2011 at 12:08a.m.

Warren Fire Chief Ken Nussle

WARREN

Forty-seven people passed the civil-service test given Dec. 18 at Harding High School to qualify for one of the 14 firefighter jobs Fire Chief Ken Nussle hopes to fill with money from a $5 million federal grant, but first he must convince Warren City Council that hiring them is a good idea.

Michelle Scala, clerk of the Warren Civil Service Commission, said Wednesday that 47 of the 62 people who took the test passed it. The exam tests general knowledge and doesn’t require firefighting knowledge, but being hired to one of the jobs requires a candidate to have emergency-medical-technician training by the time of hiring.

At 5 p.m. today, Nussle will discuss the grant with members of council’s Police and Fire Committee. Some council members have voiced concerns regarding the cost to the city to keep the firefighters after the two-year grant runs out or to pay for unemployment benefits if they are laid off.

Nussle said there is no obligation to keep the firefighters after the two years expire, but he admits he doesn’t know where the money will come from to pay unemployment benefits.

“But we have no intention of laying them off,” Nussle said. “Our goal is to use EMS to retain the firefighters.”

Nussle said 90 percent of fire departments across the country provide some level of emergency medical service. Warren does not, relying instead on private ambulance companies.

Warren did provide EMS services many years ago but did not transport patients at that time, which meant the city didn’t have a good source of revenue to pay for EMS services. The transport part of EMS is what makes the money, Nussle said.

Nussle said hiring 14 more firefighters with the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant it received last year will be a first step toward restoring EMS service.

That’s important, Nussle said, because people expect firefighters who arrive for an emergency to do something to help the wounded.

Currently, fewer than 10 percent of his firefighters have EMS training, so there’s little they can do.

The department used the SAFER grant already to rehire 10 laid-off firefighters in late September-early October, bringing staffing to 60.

If the department hires 14 more firefighters this year, it would have 74 — three more than it had when the city laid off 11 firefighters and left four vacancies unfilled Jan. 1, 2009.

David Griffing, Warren auditor, said the 11 firefighters laid off in 2009 cost the city $114,359 in unemployment benefits, or $10,396 each.

Scala said two of the 62 people who took the test were black males, and one of them was a female. She said she doesn’t know how many of them passed the test.

The department has never had a female firefighter, and the last minority hired into the department was in 1992.