KANNAPOLIS — City Council vowed Monday to embark on a plan to increase the number of paid firefighters in the Kannapolis Fire Department and improve the department in other areas that caused concern in a study produced last year.
And although they didn’t adopt the 10-year blueprint offered by consultants Robert Parnell and Michael Wilson, council members promised the concept won’t gather dust.
“It’s another tool we’re going to use to plan for the safety of our citizens,” Councilman Ken Geathers said. “We want to know where we’re at fault. We want to know where we’re not up to snuff, and we’ve got a long way to go.”
The consultants agreed, writing in their report, delivered to the city last April, that the Kannapolis Fire Department is “woefully and dangerously understaffed,” posing a danger to firefighters and residents.
Council members, presented with the report for the first time Monday, asked Fire Chief Larry Phillips to come to them with recommendations for the 2002-2003 budget.
Kannapolis relies heavily on nearly 50 volunteers to provide fire protection to some 37,000 residents in its 32-square-mile area.
The Kannapolis Fire Department currently has 29 full time employees. Five administrative positions — including Phillips — three captains, and 21 engineers comprise the paid force.
That’s too few to provide minimal protection, Parnell, a Salisbury Fire Department battalion chief, and Wilson, a battalion chief with the Charlotte Fire Department, wrote in their report.
“On-duty firefighters is what gets to fires and gets them put out,” Parnell told the council Monday night.
With a force mainly made up of volunteers, there are always unknowns, the consultants said, such as how many will make it to each fire and when they’ll arrive.
The average number of volunteers responding to fire calls in Kannapolis has declined in recent years from 16 to six. And those counts are taken at the end of a call, not during the first few, crucial minutes of a fire.
Federal regulations require four firefighters on the scene of a structure fire before two can enter to search for possible victims or begin an interior attack on the blaze.
“The dedication of the volunteers in this fire department is unsurpassed anywhere we’ve looked,” Parnell said. “The problem with the whole personnel issue is we can’t guarantee the response of volunteers.”
And they pointed out that in Kannapolis, as in most departments across the country, the volunteer ranks are shrinking due in large part to stringent and time-consuming certification requirements.
Among the recommendations are creating 66 new paid positions in the department during the next 10 years; building a fifth fire station to serve the Coddle Creek area, annexed in 1999; and relocating three existing fire stations to provide better coverage within the city.
Council members asked Phillips to prioritize his needs, attach costs to them and come back before them.
They cautioned, however, that budget constraints will dictate the pace of upgrading the force, and that a fire department created in 1984 when the city incorporated won’t be transformed overnight.
“We can’t make that leap in one year; we won’t make it in five years, but we can begin to plan,”Mayor Ray Moss said. “I wish we could do it next week, but we’ll move into it.”
Firefighter Tracy Winecoff and several other fire department employees were on hand Monday for the presentation.
An engine driver based at Kannapolis Fire Station No. 4, Winecoff expressed his appreciation for the volunteer firefighters but echoed the concerns expressed in the study.
“There are so many things we have to do, and when we’re by ourselves it’s hard,” he said. “You can’t effectively do it and you can’t safely do it.”
Still, Winecoff said, he and other firefighters will keep doing their jobs, even if that means breaking the rules. Every firefighter he knows has had to go in a burning house alone, and they’ll do it again.
“Whether it’s an approved thing or not, there’s no firefighter here who’s going to watch somebody perish in a fire,” he said. “We’re going to do what has to be done.”
Contact Scott Jenkins at 704-797-4248 or sjenkins@salisburypost.com
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