LEE BERGQUIST
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Saying budget cuts to the Milwaukee Fire Department are "akin to playing Russian roulette with people's lives," Ald. Bob Donovan said Sunday that he would ask the Milwaukee Common Council to restore financing for a north side firehouse located close to a blaze that claimed the life of a man on Saturday.

Spending reductions in the 2010 city budget forced the elimination of a 106-year-old ladder company at 3628 N. Holton St. on Dec. 27.

That ladder company, which plays a search and rescue function, would have responded to the fire on Saturday at 628 W. Clarke St., Donovan and the president of the firefighters union said at a news conference at the Holton St. firehouse.

At Saturday's fire, a man was found unresponsive on the second floor of a wood-frame house.

Paramedics took him to Columbia St. Mary's Hospital Milwaukee, where he died from smoke inhalation. The man's identity has not yet been released. The Milwaukee County medical examiner's office said Sunday afternoon it was trying to contact family members of the victim.

It was the second fatal fire in Milwaukee in 2010. There were six fatal fires in 2009, according to the Fire Department

Firefighters in ladder companies perform the initial search and rescue at a scene. Their duties are different from firefighters in engine companies, which are first charged with putting out fires before starting searches and rescues.

Neither Donovan nor David Seager, president of the Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Association, would say that eliminating the ladder company on Holton St. was the cause for why the man died. The engine company at the firehouse remains open.

But Donovan and Seager said closing the ladder company, and the decision to close three other companies for a month at a time on a rotating basis, is causing a domino effect across the city, making it harder to fight fires.

The cutbacks coincide with a shortage of paramedics that authorities are now rushing to plug with a plan for a new trainee class.

Mayor Tom Barrett and the council agreed to the service reductions for the Fire Department, but they let Fire Department officials decide how to impose the cuts.

The city's top firefighter disagreed with Donovan and Seager and said the public is receiving good fire protection.

Acting Fire Chief Michael Jones said the proposed cutbacks at firehouses were analyzed with the help of a computer program used by many large cities to ensure there would be no gaps.

Using factors such as the number of calls in an area, population density and anticipated response times under normal conditions, Jones said the department is not risking the public's safety.

"I think that we had adequate resources at the scene," Jones said. "We feel that our response times are adequate to meet the needs."

Last week, Jones and city economist Dennis Yaccarino said they were revising their budgets to hire more firefighters and cut the number of companies that are being taken out of service on a temporary basis.

Donovan, chairman of the council's Public Safety Committee, said he would propose legislation on Monday asking the council to use contingency funds to re-open the ladder company and end the rotating cuts, which officials are referring to as "brownouts."

At Saturday's fire, the first to respond was a firefighting engine company from 2903 N. Teutonia Ave. It arrived three minutes after the call, according to Fire Department records.

But because of the brownout, its companion rescue-oriented ladder company was responding to another call at N. 28th St. and W. Center St., and that took it farther away from the scene, according to Capt. Brad Sibley.

Sibley had been in charge of the ladder company on Holton St. before it was closed.

The first two ladder companies to respond were from downtown, the Fire Department's computer call report shows. They arrived six minutes after the call was received, or three minutes after the engine company.

Seager said the shuttered Holton St. ladder unit would have responded faster than the ladder units from downtown.

"Without that (ladder) company there is a delayed response," Seager said.

Jones said firefighters from ladder and engine companies are trained to do both jobs.

Publication Copyright Information
Publication Date