Camden divided on fire injuries
A short-staffed city fire department continues to lead South Jersey in firefighter injuries.
And top fire officials there have different opinions on what can be done, if anything, to stop that trend.
Camden, the region's busiest fire department, reported the second-most firefighter injuries in the state last year with 49 during 5,532 fire calls, according to a state report released this month. Camden's department fought 889 fires last year, according to the Department of Community Affairs report.
In 2007, the department led the state with 75 firefighter injuries, according to the state.
Joseph Marini, city fire chief of 10 years, called the improvement "good luck."
Marini, who said Thursday he's retiring at the end of the month, downplayed the department's ability to do more to prevent injuries.
"We're in compliance with all our required training standards," he said. "The occurrence of injuries is entirely random. They just happen."
Injury statistics for 2009 won't be available until early next year, he said.
Still, a city fire union president said the department suffers from a lack of adequate staffing, training, experience and equipment.
"We meet the basic, bottom-line standards," said Ken Chambers, president of the city firefighters Local 788. "It's nothing like it used to be when I came in and there were a lot of senior men to take you under their wing."
Fire chiefs in Cherry Hill and Collingswood attribute their low injury rates to continuous training regimens, leadership and equipment maintenance.
Cherry Hill's fire department reported two injuries last year and responded to the second-most calls in the region, 4,616. The department, which officials said holds daily training sessions, fought a reported 400 fires last year.
Cherry Hill Fire Chief Robert Giorgio said prevention stems from investigating injuries to determine what work practice should be modified.
"If you don't look at them, they continue to happen and no one pays attention to them," he said. "It's not enough to look at names on training sign-in sheets."
Giorgio and Collingswood Fire Chief John Amet said having department veterans mentor younger firefighters during calls and training is a necessity.
Collingswood's department, which Amet said has firefighters averaging around 25 years old with fewer than 10 years experience, reported no injuries last year during a reported 2,497 calls. Nearly 140 of those calls were for fires, the report shows.
Marini said most of Camden's firefighter injuries happen because of the city's high rate of major and structural fires caused by "pervasive poverty" and 100-year-old buildings. He said city fires can also have people "living in substandard conditions with bad electrical systems and poor housekeeping."
Marini also said staffing has some impact with regard to injuries.
He and Chambers, a Camden firefighter of 20 years, said the department is operating younger than it has in decades and with 40 fewer firefighters.
"We have less people doing more and that has something to do with (injuries)," Chambers said. "It's not economic times. It's poor management," which he attributed to the state's $175 million city takeover plan started in 2002.
Camden's 235 firefighters average 35 years old, Marini said.
The average age of the 856 firefighters reported injured in New Jersey last year was 39, according to the DCA report. The majority of those injuries, 474, happened during building fires.
Marini said his "younger" department's firefighting levels of training and experience don't contribute to injury rates.
But Chambers believes the department is vulnerable because most of the city's firefighters have under 10 years experience.
"This is the youngest we've been in quite some time and we vitally need the training and more money put into it," he said.
In 2003, Chambers said about half of Camden's firefighters retired and were replaced by younger members. By that year, with state takeover in place, he said fire equipment started going downhill.
"The fleet and fire apparatus needs to be replaced and we're short every day of the week," Chambers said. "I'm sure there've been injuries with faulty equipment."
City officials, including Camden's former state-appointed leader Theodore Davis, have said the state couldn't come up with more money to replace the department's aged equipment and staff vacancies.
City officials couldn't be reached Thursday or Friday for comment.
Marini said two of the city's five ladders are active, which can burden suburban departments that respond for back up. He said staffing levels have been consistent.
Marini said 95 percent of the fire department's $23 million budget pays staff salaries and benefits.
Since 2004, firefighters have made between $3 million and $6 million a year in overtime, according to figures provided by the city's finance department.
Marini and Chambers said benefits and salary increases make it more expensive for the department to spend $2.4 million to hire 40 more firefighters around the position's $60,000 average salary than to schedule straight-pay overtime for current staff members.
Staff writer Deborah Hirsch contributed to this report. Reach Jeremy Rosen at (856) 486-2456 or jrosen@camden.gannett.com
