Southington's Fire Department: The Case For More Staff
- Philip Thibodeau
- Mar 18
- 7 min read
The Town Manager’s budget proposal for next year includes a request for three new career firefighters. At the February 26 meeting of the Board of Finance, newly appointed Fire Department Chief Scott Lee explained what the Department does for the town in prepared remarks that began as follows:
“Last year, we responded to 2539 calls for service, 935 building inspections, 188 building plan reviews, and 48 community risk reduction home safety inspections. What does the fire department do for the town? At first glance, that question seems pretty simple. You put fires out. But the reality is far broader. We are an all-hazards public safety agency responding to both emergency and non-emergency incidents across the community. In many cases, we are the agency called when a person has a problem they cannot safely solve on their own. Our services are wide ranging and proactive, not just reactive.”
“We don't just respond to emergencies, we work to prevent them through our fire marshal's office. We provide building plan reviews, code enforcement, fire safety inspections, and occupancy compliance oversight. These proactive efforts reduce fire loss, protect businesses, and safeguard residents long before an emergency occurs.”
To get a better sense of why the Department requested three new lines to perform its duties, the Outsider interviewed Fire Department Battalion Chief Christian Mastrianni on February 24. The transcript of the interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
When it comes to Southington Fire Department staffing, what are the basic pieces you have to work with?
There are four fire stations in town. We staff one engine that we call Squad 5 on River Street with three career firefighters, an officer plus two. We staff that around the clock, 24/7.
At headquarters on Main Street we staff a ladder truck 24/7 with an officer and two firefighters. A big issue is that that truck is allowed to drop from three to two if someone is off – if someone is taking a sick day, for example, then that person doesn’t get replaced.
We also have a battalion chief at fire headquarters, 24 hours a day.
Station 3 on Clark Street is only staffed Monday through Friday during the days, with an officer and two firefighters. It’s a 42-hour workweek: 7 to 3, three days a week, and 7 to 4, two days a week.
We are a combination department, which means we have career and volunteer firefighters.
When are volunteers called out?
Fire Headquarters on Main Street has Company 1, which is volunteer. Station 2 in the Plantsville section of West Main is all-volunteer. There are 27 volunteers between the two companies. They have a captain and two lieutenants.
Not every call warrants additional manpower. Sometimes we just send one truck, a truck with career firefighters. But on the bigger calls, the more complex calls, the volunteers get called in to assemble a crew. Sometimes on a longer call, we call the volunteers in to cover the town while the career crews are tied up.
The decision about who gets called is all predetermined by our system, which is based on statistics for calls.
Someone might say, you’ve got at least 20 volunteers out there, that ought to be enough staffing. Why is there is a staffing shortage?
We could have 100 or 200 volunteers in this town. The problem isn’t the numbers, the problem is that they don’t all show up. Life gets in the way and we are all busy. As a volunteer you typically work a full-time job, you have a family, or, for the younger members, they’re going to college, or going for EMT certification. There’s always something occupying their time. Calls come in at random. If you are sitting in class and a structure fire comes in, you usually can’t leave your class. The days of having a full-time job and having an employer who allows you to leave work are gone now.
They also have to show up fast enough to assemble a crew, get on the fire truck and go to the scene. While the career staff, we’re already in the building, we’re ready to go.
Has the staffing been going down or has the number of calls gone up?
As towns and cities continue to grow, more houses and commercial properties are being built and expanding. Businesses are constantly opening. That means call volume is always going to go up. Our staffing hasn’t changed much in the 13 years I’ve been here.
During the day, on a weekday, we have ten firefighters on shift. But if one person is off, they aren’t replaced, and we go from ten to nine. Nights and weekends, when the South End station is closed, we only have seven on shift. And if one of them is off, we only have six.
We received the SAFER [Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response] grant in 2021 which allowed us to staff South End Station on a partial basis in 2022, Monday through Friday day shifts. But at night and on weekends that fire station doesn’t have anyone in it anymore.
The town applied for a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant to help with staffing, but didn’t get it, is that correct?
We applied for the grant, we didn’t get the grant. The intent there was eventually to bring South End to 24-7 coverage.
So we’re more vulnerable at nights and on weekends?
We’re vulnerable all the time, because the call volume is always increasing. We’ve been seeing an increase in multiple calls happening at once. And even when fully staffed, we are still below what the NFPA [National Fire Protection Association] regulation 1710 recommends.
If you have a fire at a two-story single family home, NFA 1710 recommends there be 15 to 17 firefighters for the initial alarm, and that the initial engine should arrive within four minutes.
In our town, if there’s a fire in the south end, the first arriving fire engine could be from fire headquarters on North Main Street or one from River Street on the Plainville town line. It’s going to take more than four minutes to get there. And if it’s the ladder truck, they’re only showing up with two people, where the standard suggests minimum staffing of four. So we’re behind the ball right out of the gate.
We have a protocol that brings in mutual aid from neighboring towns to help at the scene and it works pretty well. But we’re calling it a lot because we just don’t have the numbers without it.
There was a fire on Savage Street on February 18. How many firefighters were on the scene?
The staffing that day were all available when the call came in. So all 10 responded to the fire. Only one volunteer engine with only two crew members eventually came. So the shift commander, based on the updates, started the working fire protocol prior to arrival. Right away, that’s calling the Bristol and Meriden fire departments to come right to the scene. And with that it brings Cheshire, Plainville, and New Britain into the town to cover the town. But to answer your question, with ten on shift, when responding to the fire, we were below the recommended 15 to 17.
When neighboring fire departments cover the town, do they actually move staff and equipment here?
Each one will send an engine into town. Plainville responds to Station 5, and Cheshire sends an engine to Clark Street. New Britain will send a engine, a ladder, and a shift commander to headquarters. That day the shift commander asked New Britain to come to the scene for additional manpower.
The big problem would be if you had two structure fires in town at the same time, right?
If there are two structure fires, our mutual aid card allows us to cover that, but it takes more time, more reflex time.
One of the nice things about this area is that we also get a Hartford County coordinator, who would be responsible for getting more resources – but again, from further away, and that all takes time.
What difference would adding three career firefighters make?
We didn’t get that SAFER grant to hire three firefighters. We currently have one shift with eight on shift. The intent with those three additional firefighters was to bring the other three shifts up to eight. That would ensure the ladder truck at fire headquarters always had three firefighters. At minimum both Squad 5 and Truck 1 would have three firefighters. We would never have a truck responding with just two. A second issue is that at some point, we would like to get staffing for Station 3 to make it 24-7.
That way you would cut response time and bring more firefighters in?
It’s like everything: the more hands you have, the more efficient the job goes. Everything we do in the fire service we typically do in pairs. That means on the fire truck I have a group of two that can go do firefighting tasks. I can either leave the driver at the apparatus to operate it, whether pump the water, or fly the ladder, or, if he is not needed, he joins the crew to make up three.
Like with a sports team, you need so many players on the court or the field, and when you take players away you are losing your ability to play efficiently and win. That’s how it goes for us. The difference is, we’re talking life and death.
With a lot of other town entities, if they don’t have enough people on hand to, say, plow the snow, they can do it tomorrow, when everybody is in. Whereas we need people today, when the tones drop. I can’t tell a person, ‘we’ll come tomorrow.’ It’s a matter of getting people to the scene now.
It’s about the efficiency of accomplishing the task at hand, and with that comes the safety of the firefighters and the public that they’re helping. That’s where the importance of staffing comes in. People in trucks make the difference.
