Cincinnati plans to reduce fire department brownouts

CINCINNATI — City officials held a conference call Sunday to discuss a plan to reduce fire department brownouts.

Cincinnati Fire Chief Richard Braun sent a letter to Mayor John Cranley that laid out a plan to avoid further brownouts, WLWT reports.

Mayor Cranley and other council members will recommend the adoption of the plan that Chief Braun submitted, according to reports. The city council is expected to take up the issue next week.

“Brownouts aren’t just political games,” Mayor Cranley said. “These are life and death matters.”

Chief Braun told Mayor Cranley that the fire department does not meet the minimum response time to fires as required by the National Fire Protection Agency.

According to Chief Braun, in order to meet the budgetary restrictions that were placed on the fire department, a reduction in staff was implemented by the use of brownouts.

The Cincinnati Fire Department has been averaging five brownouts a day, according to the report.

However, Chief Braun said he felt it was time to re-evaluate the use of brownouts with the incorporation of a new recruit class. The addition of 14 new firefighters per shift, along with maintaining the current overtime budget, would allow the fire department to reduce the current number of brownouts, Chief Braun told WLWT.

The proposed plan would allow a maximum of two brownouts a day, according to the report.

"I was asked if I was comfortable and breathing easy with two. I will breathe easy when we have none," Braun said. "It’s huge for the citizens because now our response times will go down and we'll be able to get full complements of crews at fires quicker and more within the national standard, because now we don't meet our national standard.”

Chief Braun said the department has applied for a multi-million dollar grant that would pay for 50 new firefighters. If the grant is successful, the addition of 50 firefighters would eliminate brownouts and reduce the overtime hours, according to the report.

"We're going to use that overtime to get us down to two, so with the combination of the overtime and the 14 recruits on each unit going out, that will allow us to get to two, one or maybe no brownouts. Tomorrow there will be no brownouts,” Chief Braun said.

The report will go before the Law and Public Safety Committee Monday and to the full council on Wednesday, according to the report.

“It raises the stress level of firefighters and this will be able to lower that stress level, lower injury and sick leave rate, so it's a tremendous boost to our firefighters and our citizens,” Chief Braun said.