Fire Department discloses third virus case

LITTLE ROCK — Three city Fire Department employees have tested positive for covid-19, Chief Delphone Hubbard said Wednesday.

Hubbard said the department was notified of the third positive test Wednesday morning. The individual is an instructor at the department’s training headquarters at 7000 Murray St. That person is the second training instructor at the facility to test positive for the illness. Hubbard said it was possible that one instructor had passed the virus to the other.

“There’s a probability that he contracted it because their offices are in close proximity and they do work closely together out there at training,” Hubbard said.

Neither instructor had any contact with known covid-19 patients when responding to calls in the community, the chief said.

He said on Tuesday that the first instructor to test positive for the virus did not catch the illness from a department firefighter who tested positive last week. Hubbard said that firefighter works at a station in east Little Rock, but declined to say which to avoid identifying the employee.

The instructor who tested positive Wednesday last worked on Friday. The facility was deep-cleaned that evening, Hubbard said. The training facility is also being used as a site for donations of personal protective equipment the city is accepting and distributing during the pandemic.

As of Wednesday evening, 31 Fire Department employees were under self-quarantine. That includes three other instructors and the 25 recruits. Two firefighters who worked alongside the first firefighter to test positive for the virus completed two weeks of self-quarantine and are back at work, Hubbard said.

The recruits will continue learning via remote instruction, and none of the instructors work as active firefighters answering calls.

The department has 433 employees — 428 firefighters and five civilians.

Hubbard said the department has looked into emergency planning if a large number of employees become ill or self-quarantined. He said the first option would be to use overtime to fill those slots, and another would be to utilize the mutual aid agreement it has in place with the North Little Rock and west Pulaski County departments.

Worst-case scenario, the chief said, the department would look at placing firetrucks out of service at one of the several stations that have two or three trucks in order to ensure adequate coverage throughout the city.

The city announced the department’s first positive covid-19 case March 27. Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said in a news release the city does not know how that firefighter became infected.