FRAMINGHAM – The Framingham Fire Department is so understaffed that it can’t meet national fire safety response standards in much of the city, the fire chief and union president told the City Council last night in a joint presentation (see PDF).
In a study of more than 60,000 incidents from 2019 to 2023, the Framingham Fire Department met time and personnel standards for “low-hazard” buildings 25% of the time and medium-hazard only 1%.
“I’m not trying to scare anybody, but 1% of the city, we can get 26 firefighters there in 8 minutes. That’s a problem,” Local 1652 President Andrew Rokes told the Council.
The analysis compared Framingham FD’s capabilities to National Fire Protection Association standards on how departments should be able respond to various types of fires. Travel time to a structure fire should be within 8 minutes, according what’s known as NFPA 1710. Minimum staffing is 17 personnel for low-hazard buildings and 26 for medium-hazard.
Low hazard buildings include structures like single-family homes with no basements, while medium hazards cover settings such as like townhouses, garden-style apartments, open-air shopping centers, and commercial and office buildings
“You’ll notice we didn’t do a high hazard slide for the mapping. I thought it was too depressing,” Rokes said. “Not saying we can’t do it because we do it almost every day, but we just don’t do it safely. I was personally at a fire just a few years ago where we almost lost multiple firefighters.”
The study was commissioned by Local 1652, but Fire Chief Michael Dutcher told the Council: “I want to emphasize at the outset that I agree with the study’s findings and recommendations. The report reinforces what we have been experiencing firsthand as Framingham continues to grow in emergency services, demands increase.”
In the short term, the department is seeking to increase staffing from 30 to 33 at any given time via more overtime. That would “cover a little more of Central Framingham and South Framingham, as well as northeast Framingham and Saxonville. But Nobscot and west Framingham are still left lacking,” Rokes said.
Longer term, they presented a multi-phase plan that would include hiring more staff, adding a ladder company at Station 2 on A street in Saxonville as well as an engine and deputy chief car at station 1 on Route 9; and and building a sixth fire station in west Framingham.
“I understand that the city is in a hard financial crunch right now. I don’t expect things to be done overnight,” Rokes told the Council, noting he knows a new fire station couldn’t be built before “five, six, ten years down the road. But that would help with our response times in western Framingham as well as northwestern Nobscot, which, as you can see from those maps, is a very neglected area for getting firefighters on scene in a reasonable time.”
“Time is life in our business,” Chief Dutcher said.
Below is a map of where the FD currently meets NFPA standards for low-hazard-structure fires:
“You’ll notice it’s mostly eastern Framingham. West Framingham and Nobscot and all of south Framingham are left out of this, unfortunately, just due to the amount of firefighters we have on shift and where stations are located.”
You can see the full study and recommendations online.
A video of the full presentation with City Councilor comments is below:
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