Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office last week announced he had signed into law a multi-faceted, firefighters-welfare bill that limits their standard work week to 42 hours to “reduce burnout” on the job.
Turns out, though, the announcement wasn’t entirely accurate. The new law merely encourages local jurisdictions like Indian River County that employ Florida’s firefighters to adopt the recommended work-week restriction.
“It’s not a mandate,” County Administrator John Titkanich said Friday, after reviewing both the legislation and governor’s announcement.
Good thing, too.
There’s no practical way our county could have complied with the work-week limit before the new law – designed to enhance the safety, health and well-being of the state’s firefighters – goes into effect on July 1.
According to Titkanich’s preliminary estimates: The county would need to hire an additional 68 firefighters at a cost of “approximately $11 million” to convert to the state-recommended 24-hours-on, 72-hours-off schedules and still maintain the level of service it currently provides to the community.
That’s because the county’s Fire Rescue Division, which has 344 firefighters on its payroll, currently operates using 24-hours-on, 48-hours-off shift cycles and work weeks that average 56 hours.
Firefighters’ schedules include one “Kelly Day” – an extra 24 hours off with pay during shift cycles – every six weeks. And it’s likely the ongoing labor negotiations between their union and the county will produce a contract that provides those additional days off every three weeks, especially with this new law on the books.
But to conform with the state’s latest recommendation, which would provide our firefighters with an additional 24 hours off during their work cycles, the county can’t settle for hiring only the extra firefighters needed to cover Kelly Day shifts.
The county must significantly increase the agency’s manpower.
“It’s certainly not lost on us that, if this shift change were to become mandatory, we’d have to adjust our staffing to maximize our coverage throughout the community,” Titkanich said, expressing his concerns that state legislators might revisit the law next year – if the recommendation fails to get traction – and compel the 42-hour work week.
In fact, Titkanich said he already had “discussed the impact of the law” with David Johnson, the county’s emergency services director and fire chief, and he plans to do the same with County Commission members.
Indian River Shores Public Safety Director Tad Stone said the new law, which breezed through the state House and Senate without a “no” vote, would not impact the town’s firefighters or his agency’s operations.
“We’re fortunate in the Shores, where we don’t have the demand on our folks or the workload that other departments do,” Stone said. “We have a significant amount of down time between calls, so there’s plenty of time to recover.”
As for the merits of the state recommendation, Titkanich said the county already had “taken steps to provide relief and address issues like burnout,” adding that hiring more firefighters is inevitable, given the demands of our community’s growing population.
The county recently committed to building a new fire station on 87th Street, adjacent to Sebastian River High School and the Vero Lake Estates subdivision. The five-member team that will occupy the facility has been operating out of a trailer at the North County Pool for several years.
But to hire enough firefighters to reduce their typical work weeks down to 42 hours?
“You wouldn’t do it overnight,” Titkanich said. “You’d do it in phases, and it would probably take at least a couple of years to implement. I’ll talk to the commissioners and get direction on what they want us to do and how we should go about it.”
County Commission Chairman Joe Flescher last weekend described the new law’s work-week limit as a “strong recommendation” from the governor and Florida Legislature.
He said he expects the commission, which is preparing for its summer budget workshops, to direct Titkanich and Johnson to develop a plan to adopt the 24-on, 72-off work cycle – but it’s unrealistic to expect any immediate change.
“This just happened a couple of days ago, and when you’re talking about an $11 million impact, you need to allow time for us to look at our operation before we implement a plan that gets us there,” Flescher said Sunday.
“We have to examine how we’re doing things now and adjust accordingly,” he added. “We, as commissioners, will work with staff and determine what we need to do to come into compliance.
“I don’t know if it can be done in this budget cycle, because there’s a lot to discuss, but we’ll do it.”
As they should.
We, as a community, need to appreciate and show proper concern for the overall well-being of our firefighters, who courageously accept that they might be asked to put their lives on the line – at a moment’s notice, every time they answer the alarm.
“Their heroic work takes a physical and mental toll,” DeSantis said when signing House Bill 929 into law Friday in Palm Beach Gardens.
Multiple studies have revealed that burnout, trauma and stress not only threaten the mental health of firefighters, but they also place these duty-bound first responders at a significantly higher risk of suicide than the general population.
You might remember David Dangerfield, the 48-year-old Fire Rescue battalion chief and rescue diver who, shortly after posting a suicide note on Facebook, drove to a rural area of the county and shot himself.
He cited his struggle with job-related post-traumatic stress disorder.
“PTSD for firefighters is real,” he wrote. “If your loved one is experiencing signs, get them help quickly. 27 years of deaths and babies dying in your hands is a memory that you will never get rid of. It haunted me daily until now. …”
The new law, which expands the scope of the Florida Firefighters Occupational Safety and Health Act to include suicide prevention, addresses that reality, too.
But would a third day off after a 24-hour shift make any noticeable difference?
It might.
Firefighters who work 24-hour shifts often need a full day to recover, leaving them with only one full, well-rested day off to spend with family and friends before they’re back at work.
“In the long run, going to 24-on and 72-off makes sense,” said Commissioner Joe Earman, who served in the Fire Rescue Division for 35 years before retiring in December 2015 as a captain. “I support the legislation, because we need to protect our firefighters’ health.
“When I was there, we had a 56-hour work week,” he added. “If we go to three-week Kelly Days, maybe we can get it down to 48 hours. Either way, though, we’re going to have to bring in more people.
“We can’t do it right now, because it will require a whole lot of hiring, but we should be able to get there in a few years.”
Let’s hope so.
This isn’t another unfunded mandate from the state – because, despite the governor’s misleading press release, the law only encourages communities to embrace the 42-hour work week for their firefighters.
But it’s a worthwhile recommendation we can live with it, especially as the county’s population races towards 175,000, new residential developments are under construction and the tax base continues to expand.
