With calls falling, county fire department idles some teams

The Clark County Fire Department said Wednesday it is cutting back as many as 12 firefighting teams because the statewide coronavirus shutdown has seen calls for service fall by 34 percent, particularly on the Las Vegas Strip.

Personnel from those units will now fill in for firefighters on other units who are sick, injured or on vacation, according to the county, and they will be paid at normal rates. The backup role is not unusual but generally performed by firefighters pulled from existing shifts who then get paid overtime.

“The majority of these units are in the resort corridor and are usually among the busiest in the country,” Fire Chief John Steinbeck said in a statement. “The drop in visitor volume has caused service demand to fall significantly in those areas.”

Steinbeck said, however, teams that stand down this week may not be the same ones that stand down next week. Officials will consider the number of calls, the ability to respond to fires and to transport injured people to hospitals in making those decisions.

“A unit that makes sense to temporarily shut down this week may very well not make sense next week,” he said.

The 12 units expected to be removed from rotation include: five rescue units, four engine companies, a ladder truck, a rescue squad and a battalion chief.

Steinbeck said that the change would not affect response time. It will, however, save the department a “significant amount of money” in reduced overtime pay as departments countywide seek to drastically trim costs amid bleak projections. The coronavirus pandemic is expected to cause $1.1 billion in tax revenue losses over the next 16 months.

The exact amount of savings by temporarily reducing units is hard to predict and dependent on the length of the shutdown and when visitors increase, according to Steinbeck.

“This is an unprecedented situation that our community is in, and management and labor must work together to get through this crisis,” Steve Thompson, president of International Association of Firefighters Local 1908, said in a statement.

Contact Shea Johnson at sjohnson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @Shea_LVRJ on Twitter.