DS Chief: Firefighters needed

• By BOB ANDERSON
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: May 14, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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DENHAM SPRINGS — The city’s Fire Department can’t safely rescue anyone from a burning building because of a lack of personnel, Fire Chief Ivy “Woody” Cutrer told the City Council on Tuesday.

“It’s impossible to properly perform a rescue in this city right now,” because there aren’t enough firefighters to handle what needs to be done to reach victims inside a house and to provide the needed support outside, he said.

“Right now, our response is so low” that to try to perform a rescue in even the smallest house wouldn’t be safe, the fire chief told the council.

“For everybody you send into a structure, you have to have two outside, and you have to send in at least two — nobody goes alone,” Cutrer said when interviewed after the meeting about his comments.

To have fewer people is not just ineffective, but dangerous to the firefighters who enter the burning house, the fire chief said.

“But I know these guys, and if a mom is standing outside screaming about her children, they’re going to go in,” even without sufficient backup, Cutrer said.

To be effective, the necessary number of trained firefighters must arrive in the first five minutes, he said.

Despite enormous growth, Denham Springs has the same number of firefighters it had when he joined the department in 1980, Cutrer said.

The fire chief said he has a total of 24 employees to handle three stations for three shifts. When days off are factored in, the city usually has a supervisor and six firefighters on duty at any given time to handle all three stations, Cutrer said.

The department is about to take delivery on a ladder truck, which he said the city needs to fight fires in its growing number of large buildings.

Currently, the department doesn’t have enough personnel  to man that truck and pumper trucks at the other two stations, Cutrer said.

The ladder truck requires at least three firefighters, with six being the optimum team to operate the specially equipped vehicle, he said.

The fire chief asked the council if it wants him to “just park the aerial truck?”