Fire chief addresses negative comments about siren useage, on-scene treatment of firefighters

The Mount Olive Fire Department is in trouble.

The trouble is being driven by a shortage of volunteers — a nationwide crisis for the volunteer departments that account for about 7 percent of fire coverage nationwide. Paid departments are having problems attracting firefighters as well.

Mount Olive Fire Chief Greg Wiggins provided that grim assessment before a Dec. 13 standing-room-only meeting of the Mount Olive Town Board.

He was accompanied by several of the town’s volunteer and paid firefighters.

There are a number of reasons for the shortage, Wiggins pointed out.

He focused on two — morale issues caused by people making negative comments on social media and firefighters being berated and cursed while on the scene of a call.

“Positive (comments) is normally good for morale, negative comments not so much,” he stressed.

And the berating and harassment of firefighters on scene could put the lives of the people being helped in danger as well as the lives of firefighters, he said.

One issue that has generated negative comments is the department’s use of a siren to alert firefighters of a call — an issue that Wiggins said he thought had been fully and well explained about a year and a half ago.

As such, the fire chield told the boardhe was somewhat surprised when comments surfaced on Facebook questioning the need for the siren.

Wiggins said he does not have a Facebook page, but that his wife and some of his firefighters do, and they keep him aware of things that come up pertaining to the fire department.

People think the department has the “latest-and-greatest new multi-million dollar radio system,” Wiggins attested.

“I am going to try to explain that again,” he said. “The new digital radio has nothing to do with the paging system. Digital pagers are very expensive and are not as reliable as the pagers we currently use. The siren was off before because we had a (signal) repeater put on our radio here in Mount Olive which made our pagers work fine — almost 100 percent.”

However, after the county made an upgrade to the “latest-and-greatest radio system” it was causing a problem in the dispatch center and the county made the department turn the repeater off.

That resulted in the pagers not being as reliable as they once were, meaning that the siren was needed once again to alert firefigthers of a call, Wiggins said.

“Volunteers understand what they need equipment-wise,and otherwise, better than anyone to provide the service that they provide free of charge,” Wiggins asserted. “This was all explained a year and a half ago, how it affects life and property insurance rates, firefighter safety, civilian safety and response times.

“After that last meeting I said that if there are any questions or concerns about the fire department to contact me. I am the first link in a chain of command. So far as I know, no one has contacted me in a year and a half. For this issue to come up again so soon after it was explained so well could mean several things — someone didn’t listen; someone didn’t understand; someone doesn’t care what the volunteers think or it is just going to come up every election cycle.”

Either way, it is a morale killer for volunteers, Wiggins stressed.

If someone has a concern about the Mount Olive Fire Department, firefighters are at the fire station from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, he said.

“I am available anytime you see me,” Wiggins said. “That red fire (pickup) truck I ride around on, with the No. 7 on the side, I don’t care where you see it, I’ll talk to you.

“I’ll answer my phone. I answer when you call. I will do it every time.”

RESPONSE TIME, HARASSMENT

Wiggins said the second issue he wanted to address was response times and firefighters being cursed at while on a call scene.

Since Jan. 1 of this year up to Dec. 12, volunteers have undergone 1,722 hours of training, and the department’s five paid personnel have 1,643 hours of training for a total of 3,365 hours, he said.

“These guys are doing a lot of training to provide a service to this town, its citizens and surrounding community,” Wiggins said. “Currently for this year from Jan.1 up to this point, we have had 370 calls.

“That’s a lot of calls for volunteers to take time away from their families. The average response time to our calls during the month of November was five and a half minutes. The National Fire Protection Association, better known as the NFPA, has set a six-minute guideline for fire department response times to a fire emergency. That’s not bad for a bunch of old volunteers.”

Wiggins used some recent calls to illustrate the department’s quick response times.

One included an Oct. 16 house fire on Franklin Street.

The department was dispatched at 5:16 p.m. after all the firefighters had left the station. Trucks were en route at 5:19 p.m. — only three minutes after being toned out, Wiggins said.

Firefighters were on scene at 5:23 p.m. — just four minutes after being toned out, he said. The fire was knocked down in less than three minutes.

“At 5:39 we made contact with the family to see what their needs might be,” he said. “We had Red Cross on the way to assist them, that was at 5:39. Remember we were en route at 5:19. We cleared the scene at 7:25.”

During that time firefighters made numerous contacts with the family explaining what they were doing and why and what condition the house was in, he continued.

Wiggins said he told the family he would be back later to check on the house to make sure there was no rekindle.

Firefighters returned to the station to clean up their equipment. Wiggins got home for dinner, but told his wife that he had forgotten to check the house.

He returned to the house arriving about 9:44 p.m. and discovered the fire had rekindled.

There was a lot of smoke and a police officer arrived at about the same time, he said. Police Chief Jason Hughes had his officers drive through the neighborhood and keep an eye on the house, too, Wiggins said.

Wiggins told the town board he did not have the siren sound at that time of night and instead got on his phone to call some of the paid firefighters to respond. A volunteer responded as well.

They cleared the rekindle at 10:20 p.m., he said.

Two mutual-aid departments assisted with the fire providing trucks and personnel.

Two days later, volunteers responded to a traffic accident on Breazeale Avenue.

“We were dispatched at 3:29 p.m.,” he said. “We had the first truck out of the building at 3:30, and we on the scene at 3:33, and we did not run emergency traffic. The police officers had already been on the scene, and it was called PD only.

“When the police officers arrived on the scene they were quick to call the fire department because of fluids in the road and for traffic control assistance.”

When firefighters arrived a man cursed them and said it had taken them 30 minutes to arrive, Wiggins said. The man was told it actually had taken only four minutes.

He also complained that firefighters hadn’t looked good on Franklin Street because of the extra departments. Wiggins said they explained to him that it is standard procedure to have three departments work a structure fire.

Wiggins noted that the next time such a situation could be handled differently since he has the authority to have people removed from a call scene.

“I am not going to stand for my firefighters to be cursed on the scene or be harassed,” he said. “Not everything is negative, but that one negative comment wipes out all of the positive comments you get.”

Wiggins said that is why he keeps and rereads thank-you notes.

“Like I said, all of these things are forcing the volunteers away,” he said. “We will never be able to replace the volunteers, not monetarily. We cannot afford to fill that station up with paid people.

“We have got to keep the volunteers as long as we possibly can — keep the siren and stop the harassing and cursing.”