Paid-Call Firefighters Put Out

The Orange County Fire Authority said Thursday that it will eliminate its system of paid-call firefighters by Jan. 1 and replace them with reserve firefighters, who will receive more training and less pay.

Paid-call firefighters represent about half of the authority’s 1,200-person force and have been used increasingly over the years to back up full-time crews. But Fire Chief Charles “Chip” Prather stressed Thursday that the changes will not affect emergency services for the more than 1 million residents covered by the agency.

The decision to kill the program was made in part by questions about whether the authority was violating federal wage-and-hour laws. Those laws require volunteers for government entities to be paid nominal stipends rather than hourly wages. The paid-call firefighters work on an as-needed basis and are paid an hourly rate when on duty.

“Being a [paid-call] firefighter was never meant to be a job,” authority spokesman Capt. Scott Brown said. “Some recent court cases in other parts of the country have caused us to question whether we had moved too far in the direction of compensating” them.

The union representing full-time firefighters has long criticized the volunteer program, arguing that it compromised the quality of emergency care and relied too heavily on volunteers with minimal training.

Volunteers are not required to be certified for medical emergencies, even though 80% of calls handled by the authority are for medical help.

The paid-call system will be replaced next year by a new program that treats the volunteers more like reserve police officers. The reserve firefighters will receive extra training and will be required to be certified emergency medical technicians.

“This is a step in the right direction,” said Joe Kerr, president of the Assn. of Orange County Professional Firefighters. “The current program had overstepped its bounds.”

Under the new system, reserves will be paid much less than before--$5 per call for up to eight hours and $20 for every eight-hour increment after that. Paid-call firefighters now get $8 per call and $8 an hour after being at a call for 90 minutes.

Dan York, a director of the Paid Call Firefighters Assn., said the changes will save taxpayers money but questioned whether the agency will attract enough volunteers.

“Who are you going to find to go out on a hot day to do a brush fire and risk your life and health for $5?” York said. “I’d do it for nothing, but for a lot of guys, that’s a hard sell.”

Chief Prather was quick to praise the 600 volunteers and said the authority hopes to encourage paid-call firefighters to join the new reserve program.

No other changes in service are expected at the 14 fire stations staffed by both full-time firefighters and paid-call volunteers. Another eight stations now are staffed by volunteers and will be converted to all-reserves stations after Jan. 1.

“The single most important component of this change is to ensure that the emergency services expected by our communities are there and uninterrupted,” authority spokesman Brown said.

The authority won’t hire any additional full-time firefighters. But he acknowledged that no one is sure how many paid-call volunteers would apply to become reserves and whether their newly limited role would trigger deployment changes.

The paid-call system has been used since the authority’s inception in 1995, and for decades before that by the Orange County Fire Department.

The national firefighters union has been pressing for the elimination of volunteer firefighters in urban areas. The Orange County Fire Authority is among the largest departments in California to still use them.