More fire department staffing changes are coming on December 29, said the Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department in a memo released Friday, December 6. Of the four stations that lost career staff as part of the summer staffing plan (Greenbelt, Berwyn Heights, Bowie-Belair and Bunker Hill) one, Bunker Hill, will see some return. In addition, Laurel will gain career firefighters at one of their stations. Greenbelt will be the new location for the Northern EMS Duty Officer (NEMSDO) and will have a 24/7 paramedic ambulance. The future of staffing at the station, however, still seems precarious.
Greenbelt, Berwyn Heights
In Greenbelt the majority of the need is EMS related. The current coverage system in place is working well, Chief Tiffany Green maintained when speaking with the News Review on Monday, December 9. Similarly, coverage for Berwyn Heights is working, she said, and whenever they call to say they don’t have staffing, the county sends a fire resource to that station. Everyone is comfortable with that, she said. In addition, if needed, in January the county has committed to adding an EMS resource to that station three days a week.
To help meet Greenbelt’s EMS need and because Bunker Hill will be gaining staff, the county is moving the NEMSDO from Bunker Hill to Greenbelt. The NEMSDO is a high-ranking EMS position responsible for coordinating EMS operations, including dispatching ambulances and managing critical situations. In addition, Paramedic Ambulance 858 will be positioned at Greenbelt 24/7, staffed with overtime personnel. Ambulance 899 will remain at the station, too, staffed with overtime personnel as the peak demand unit from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. The goal is to enhance EMS response coverage to Greenbelt and surrounding areas, including Berwyn Heights, College Park, Glenn Dale, Lanham and Seabrook.
The News Review asked Green if the addition of a 24/7 ambulance and the NEMSDO to Greenbelt could be taken as a sign the county plans to continue to staff the station. “We never wanted to come out of Greenbelt,” said Green. “What does Greenbelt need?” she asked. They need more EMS presence than they need fire, she said. “And what are my volunteers doing?” asked Green. “We’ve had very little participation from them [while] some stations exceeded expectations,” she said. Green suggested she needed to treat stations fairly and hold volunteers accountable. “Does [Greenbelt] need to combine with Berwyn Heights into one?” asked the chief.
However, she said her commitment is to have staff at Greenbelt. “I do believe that having someone in that station is necessary. I’d like to see multiple EMS [there].”
Bunker Hill
In selecting which stations to add staff to, Green said they looked at gaps. Of the four stations who lost career staff this year, Bunker Hill had the biggest service gap, she told the News Review, when asked how they made the decision of where to return staff. That station was meeting response time standards for most of its calls but relying on volunteer leadership and she’s listened to them and their need for career support in the decision, said Green.
Laurel
“Once we started looking at our service gaps we saw that Laurel has the biggest gaps in the county,” Green told the News Review. Many calls in that area were being met by responders outside of Prince George’s County, she said, and they weren’t meeting the response time goals. In the Laurel area, at the north of the county, neighboring coverage is provided by Anne Arundel, Howard and Montgomery counties. But those fire departments are spending more time in our county offering mutual aid than we are in theirs and each one of those partners have told PGFD we need to figure out staffing, said Green. The fire department, still critically understaffed, couldn’t staff both Laurel Fire Departments (Station 810 and Station 849) so they are staffing one, says Green. Beginning December 29, Station 810 will have six career personnel per shift, totaling 24 personnel across all four shifts. Medic 810 will become Paramedic Ambulance 810.
Increased staffing in Laurel has implications for Greenbelt because Beltsville was spending the majority of its time in Laurel, said Green. Now she hopes that neighboring fire departments will be more available for the Greenbelt corridor, instead of being pulled north.
Speed, Transparency
Green says the county fire department is moving with all the speed they can and seeking to be transparent in sharing their future plans as soon as they can. While new recruits are in training and face some of the toughest exams toward the end of that, it’s hard to know how many additional staff each cohort will yield due to graduation rates and attrition. As we reported previously, though PGFD gained 29 new recruits in July, they had lost 28 sworn employees since May 31, some of whom were recruits, for a net gain of a single person. This current recruit cohort will graduate Friday, December 27 and will begin working at stations on Sunday, December 29. “We’re not even waiting a pay period,” stressed Green. She noted they are also bound by collective bargaining agreements and those agreements come into play with which stations can be staffed and with how many members. She is sharing plans as soon as she is able to when she’s confident of the number of staff she can rely on as recruits graduate, said Green.