News Channel 15 has an article which states that the Decatur FD will be reducing the number of firefighters:
The city of Decatur is reducing staff to avoid a budget deficit. The total projected budget shortfall is $1.6 million. A big part of the city’s plan to fill that shortfall is the elimination of 20 positions across the city, six of those being firefighters.
“We’ve eliminated 20 positions in the fiscal year 2014 budget,” said City Manager Ryan McCrady. “10 of those were individuals that were laid off, and 10 of those positions are vacant positions that are either currently vacant or will be vacant by the end of the year.”
All six of the fire positions fall into the latter group, with four of them currently open positions. “Two more firefighters have declared an intent to retire,” said McCrady. “So there won’t be any layoffs in the fire department. We just won’t fill those six positions.”
That will mean one less engine company operating out of Fire Station Number 1, which basically means the one fire truck and its crew.
“The optimal solution is to have nine companies, but our resources don’t allow for that,” said Assistant City Manager Billy Tyus. “And the only time we anticipate there might be a questionable response, is if you have multiple events going on throughout the community.”
The department will go from nine total companies to eight. Over the last two years, they’ve been operating part of that time with only eight companies, in a process called brownouts. “What we know from the past from running browouts is that we can adequately cover the city,” said McCrady.
City officials believe that even in a rare situation of multiple complicated events, they can still adequately respond.
“We do have good mutual aid agreements with neighboring districts,” said McCrady. “Since 911 there’s been something set up called MABAS, which is a mutual aid box alarm system.”
