PHOENIX — In January of 2017, Ben Lindquist got a call he’ll never forget.
“Mom said, 'Hey, the house is on fire,'” Lindquist said. “I could actually see the column from what I guess now is probably 15 miles away.”
It took 20 minutes for firefighters to arrive.
“The first closest fire engine to my parents’ house was less than a mile away. Unfortunately, they were on another call. The next closest fire truck to my parents’ house, they were on another call,” Lindquist recalled. “The next closest fire truck station to my parents’ house, they were on a call. So, they got the fourth closest fire truck.”
Lindquist is the Executive Vice President of the United Phoenix Firefighters Union and a firefighter himself. That day underscored a problem that’s only getting worse.
“It's just an unfortunate reality. I think it was kind of an anomaly back then and something that didn't happen all the time. But unfortunately, that's happening every single day,” Lindquist said.
Maricopa County is one of the fastest growing in the United States, but the Phoenix Fire Department has struggled to keep pace. The lack of manpower means longer response times and overworked firefighters.
"In the last, close to 12 years, we've added one new fire station, a couple new trucks, and about 2% of an increase in our staffing when we've had a 40% increase in the call volumes,” Bryan Willingham, United Phoenix Firefighters president said.
The National Fire Protection Agency recommends a five-minute response time, but the Phoenix Fire Department is averaging over nine minutes. Couple that with the record volume of calls, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
Station 7, located near 7th Street and Hatcher Road, operates the busiest fire engine in the state.
“They're running over 6,000 calls a year. Crisis levels for a fire truck is over 3,000. That's where you should be adding additional units in that station with that engine company,” Willingham said. “If you look at some of the projections that we've seen, two to three years from now, we're going to be at 10, 11, 12-minute response times.”
Running at crisis levels has now become the new normal.
“At this point, we have 60% of our apparatus running 4,000 calls a year. What I was doing 15 years ago, and was considered crazy. Fast forward 15 years, and it's now just considered the norm,” Lindquist said.
But it shouldn’t be — and the long hours and hard days are starting to take a toll.
“It's tearing our firefighters apart. We've had a 28% increase in our employee assistance program, more PTSD,” Willingham said. “We have somewhat of a suicide watch going on with multiple of our members because of the PTSD, the sleep deprivation that occurs.”
The Phoenix City Council already approved building two new fire stations, and voters passed the General Obligation Bond last year which will add another four. That will bring a total of six new stations within the next five years. Willingham acknowledged the city has been working to remedy the problem, but they urgently need more resources.
“Our city management is doing the best they can, but they're limited with their revenue and the resources that they can provide because of money. That's what everything boils down to,” Willingham said. “About 64% of the General Fund goes to fire and police right now, so we do get a large portion of that. There's also a special revenue fund that we've had over the years, but those special revenue funds are putting band-aids on an arterial bleed, where we don't have enough revenue to really put those trucks in service.”
Willingham added that the department needs an additional “400 bodies, the apparatus and the stations as well, that costs a lot of money.” He said one option is to increase the sales tax.
“Our current Mayor and city manager, I don't think it's their fault. They're in the positions that they are now because other politicians in the past have kicked the can down the road,” Willingham said. “We’re at a critical juncture in the city of Phoenix.”
ABC15 reached out to the Phoenix Mayor’s office for a response but has not yet heard back.
"Until we start being able to get more resources to address the massive influx of people that have moved to the Valley, the response times are really going to be rolling the dice on the day that you may call 911 on the worst day of your life,” Lindquist said.
