City's firefighters being stretched thin
COVID-19 infections and isolations are stretching the capabilities of city firefighters, who need to be prioritized for vaccinations, according to their union and city officials.
Currently, 56 firefighters have been isolated due to the virus, with seven of them infected, fire Chief Steve Dongworth said on Monday.
“It is stretching us in terms of staffing,” he said.
“On Saturday, I think it was, we had three trucks that we couldn't staff. It's very platoon specific or shift specific in terms of where the problems arise, but certainly (we're) taking some measures right away to make sure our staffing doesn't drop due to COVID isolations.”
Those measures include approving more overtime, said Dongworth, adding so far the department has dealt with 50 COVID -19 infections over the past year.
“This spike started around March 30, so the last 13 days have been the most challenging,” said Dongworth.
In recent days, city firefighters have been busy battling a variety of building fires at a time when their staffing levels have shrunk, a spokesman for the Calgary Firefighters Association said in a tweet late Sunday.
“We've had dozens of firefighters either stricken with COVID or isolating because of close contact. We don't have enough firefighters in our halls. And with the city growing, we're already stretched to the limit,” stated the tweet from Matt Osborne.
In an interview, Osborne said in the past week nearly a dozen trucks have been taken out of service due to a lack of personnel — scenarios he said put the public at risk.
But he added the situation is also endangering firefighters' families.
“We go home to our families at the end of the day, so that's a concern about keeping our families safe,” said Osborne, who questioned why police have been included on the recent vaccination eligibility list while firefighters haven't.
Dongworth said the department is still dealing with spiking COVID numbers, but expects to get some firefighters now in isolation back on the job sometime this week.
Both Dongworth and Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the province's failure to include firefighters in the latest vaccine rollout phase is difficult to fathom.
“This is extremely anger-inducing,” Nenshi said.
“As we know we have continually had a challenge with this provincial
government in recognizing the vital work that firefighters do every day, as emergency medical responders.”
Given firefighters' life-saving role that includes delivering artificial respiration, it's clear they should be considered health-care workers and given among the highest priority for vaccine, said Nenshi.
“To assume that they're somehow not medical responders or health-care workers is unimaginable. It is illogical to the extreme,” he said.
But he said his calls to the provincial government to take action and move from its policy based on age priority have so far fallen on deaf ears.
“I have not had much luck ... and I keep getting told that the agebased vaccine is the best science. I just don't believe that's true anymore,” said Nenshi.
On Monday, Premier Jason Kenney said targeting the elderly and other vulnerable populations with vaccines has demonstrably saved lives.
He noted that some firefighters who perform intensive medical duties have received vaccinations, but added the province is following expert medical advice in prioritizing other groups over most firefighters.
“We continue to follow the advice of both the national and provincial scientific advisory councils on the vaccine program, which is very much to focus on people very vulnerable to negative outcomes,” said Kenney.
“In the context of a scarce number of vaccine doses, if we were to say a healthy, robust 25-yearold firefighter gets in the vaccine queue ahead of a 65-year-old with chronic conditions, that in no way reflects the real risk profile here.”
Paramedics, he said, have now been fully included in the vaccine rollout.
Dongworth countered that Kenney 's misinformed, in that all firefighters perform the same types of medical duties and attend the same scenes alongside paramedics and police in close quarters with the public.
“They're there at the same times those procedures are done and (police and paramedics) can be vaccinated,” said Dongworth, adding his staff attends 3,000 calls yearly that include exposure to virus-carrying aerosols.
“Our people are pretty frustrated and feel devalued by this.”
Alberta has one of the best vaccine programs in the country, and statistics showing the province fourth from the bottom in its delivery numbers can be attributed to glitches in reporting from pharmacies, said Kenney.
More than 850,000 doses have been administered in Alberta with the province expecting to deliver 300,000 a week — a number they hope to ramp up to 500,000.