City of LA Reserve Fire Fighters program needs to be implemented to save lives, Union needs to accept reality. Allow Reserve firefighters !

Station File Time Lapse #4 from Dan Finnerty on Vimeo.

Shared Sacrifice, Allow the Los Angeles Fire Department to recruit and train volunteer firefighters for implementing an extensive network of high quality candidates to fill positions which otherwise would have remained vacant.

After the 1994 Northridge earthquake Los Angeles became very aware we were woefully under prepared for a major catastrophe, now in these very lean budget years we are forced to brownout stations and risk lives in order to meet budgetary constraints while at the same time earning ten’s or hundreds of thousands of dollars in Overtime.

Clearly we do not have enough firefighters, and we can’t afford to pay for more with the very lucrative compensation packages offered to Sworn members of the city.

Solution: Reserve Firefighters.

They would be trained at the Los Angeles Fire Academy, they would be required to pass the same background investigation, and they would be part time volunteer fire fighters required to perform a minimum amount of service per month to the city for the first several years after training in order to recoup the investment the city makes.

Only one obstacle remains the Union. Whose old arguments fly in the face of logic because we have qualified Reserve Police Officers, who by all accounts can take or save human life.

If the Los Angeles Police Academy can Train and recruit high quality Reserve Police Officers It would be very difficult to argue that the Los Angeles Fire Academy could not perform to the same standards.

It’s time Los Angeles sees through the smoke screen of the union and allows the City of Los Angeles to bring up the numbers of Fire Fighters to the same levels of staffing as the Los Angeles Police Department and to afford the citizens of this city the same protection the County of Los Angeles and most every other city allow, Volunteer Firefighters.

As the fires continue to grow,  and lives are lost by our brave firefighters it is now more urgent then ever to explore the possibility of this solution to allow those willing to sacrifice the opportunity to do so.