MILLERSVILLE, Md. — 900 full-time professional firefighters to protect 568,000 people in Anne Arundel County.
Anne Arundel County Professional Fire Fighters, Local 1563 President Joe Addivinola says the county’s firefighter and EMS number comes up short.
WATCH: Call to add firefighters in Anne Arundel County
“It’s a lot. It’s probably around four or five hundred people,” said Addivinola.
“And any kind of dollar sign you can attach to each one of them?” we asked.
“It’s a lot to train somebody in the academy. Right now, to get the emergent needs right now, I would say it’s 150 people that we need,” responded the union president.
National safety standards call for a minimum of four firefighters to go out on every fire engine, ladder truck and aerial tower each time they respond to a call.
Some of the county’s busiest stations only use three, putting them at greater risk and cutting into response times as well.
“The longer it takes to get to some remote areas in the county even, especially that don’t have water supply, it’s a ticking time bomb. We definitely need the people to staff the apparatus with the national standards and, you know, seconds and minutes count,” said Addivinola.
The county has also routinely uses cross-staffing, a single crew responsible for staffing multiple apparatus at the same station.
During a major event, that could leave some much-needed equipment idle when its needed the most.
The cost of increasing staff could run in the millions of dollars.
“We all know what the numbers are. We’ve all been working together to try to get a common goal of keeping our members safe and the community safe,” said Addivinola, “County exec knows and all the county council people know. This isn’t new information to them. We’ve been preaching this for the last 10 years.”
