Three dispatchers are watching Jeopardy on TV. Another is immersed in a thick volume of The History of the Balkans. One officer has gone downstairs to the basement of the building, located on Turk near Gough Street, to sleep.
Then a phone rings. A dispatcher grabs it:
"Fire Department, San Francisco."
Someone is unconscious on a Muni bus at Kearny and North Point. Engine 28 is sent. Television, reading, and sleep are undisturbed.
It's been an ordinary day at the dispatch center, which means things have been pretty slow. Earlier, a dispatcher went grocery shopping and brought back food for the evening's supper -- chicken breasts, mozzarella, zucchini, and vermicelli. Two other firefighters spent a couple of hours preparing the meal, chicken Parmesan and pasta. There were no major incidents to deal with, just a few coronaries, a grass fire, and several false alarms.
In an eight-hour period, the five dispatchers manning the Communications Center made a grand total of 73 dispatches.
During an emergency, Fire Department dispatchers manage dozens of calls almost simultaneously, sending engines, trucks, and battalion chiefs to the scene of a blaze. These dispatchers must ensure that the right equipment and manpower arrive at the right time to minimize the cost -- both human and monetary -- of disaster.
But most days at "Radio," as the Communications Center is known in the Fire Department, are slow days. Real crises just don't happen very often. And only a fraction of those crises are handled by the Fire Department. Police dispatchers answer all of San Francisco's 911 calls. Only the small portion of emergency calls that are fire-related are passed to the Fire Department.
The Communications Center dispatches an average of 164 calls a day, which works out to just slightly more than one dispatch per dispatch employee, per hour. Few of the calls are for fires. On average, 75 percent of calls deal with emergencies that aren't all that fiery -- car accidents, water leaks, and heart attacks among them. Most of these calls are for first aid.
Fire dispatchers work 24-hour shifts, usually followed by three days off. Between disasters, when times are slow, fire dispatchers fill those daylong shifts with reading and TV watching. They surf the Internet. They play computer games. They cook lunch and dinner. Between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m., they take turns sleeping: On a typical, five-man shift, two dispatchers "go downstairs" at 6 p.m. and sleep until they resume their posts at 1 a.m., when the three other dispatchers go downstairs until 8 a.m. Most nights, each person gets about seven hours of sleep.
There is absolutely nothing surreptitious about this literal sleeping on the job. The dispatchers rest until they are called upstairs to take their part of the waking shift, or to help dispatch a large fire. But interruption of sleep for emergency's sake is a rare occurrence.
Assignment to the Fire Department Communications Center is, by almost any honest calculation, a sweet deal. For a few hours of real work each month, a dispatcher earns a firefighter's wages -- as much as $70,000 a year in regular pay and overtime.
"Taxpayers are paying five people a lot of money to man the dispatch stations," says one retired firefighter who requested anonymity. "They're not paying them to sleep."
Most major metropolitan fire departments employ civilian dispatchers on shorter shifts, because doing so is less costly and just as effective as using firefighters on 24-hour stints. But the San Francisco Fire Department stubbornly favors round-the-clock firefighter dispatchers -- a system that pays maximal wages for minimal work.
Public records show that by working overtime, Fire Department dispatchers were able to increase their regular earnings by an average of 16 percent between 1991 and 1996. The top five overtime earners during that period supplemented their incomes by as much 25 percent each year. Over that six-year span, one lieutenant augmented his salary by a total of $74,000 -- essentially adding more than an entire year's pay to his regular earnings.
In 1991 alone, one senior dispatcher increased his earnings by nearly 60 percent -- just by working overtime.
Dinner is serious business at a firehouse. At the fire Communications Center, too.
A few minutes before 6 p.m., the dispatchers are watching the NBA playoffs; it's the New York Knicks vs. the Miami Heat. Patrick Ewing has just scored for New York, eliciting a frustrated, "Aw, come ON!" from the back of the windowless room.
One of the dispatchers emerges from the kitchen, shaking his head sadly.
"Did you see the chicken he got?" the blue-T-shirted firefighter sighs to no one in particular, assessing the groceries bought earlier in the day. "There's not enough."
Another dispatcher offers to shop for more chicken, but the chef says he will make do. In the apartment-size kitchen, the two men begin pulling skillets and spices from well-weathered shelves and cupboards. A dishwasher serves as a counter top. The cooking ritual has begun.
Dinner is just one of the firehouse practices that firefighters have carried over to Radio. In fact, fire dispatchers live just like regular firefighters -- they just don't actually fight fires.
Most of the dispatchers are in a category of work that is known as "light duty"; they are firefighters who suffer from a variety of ailments -- seizures, heart conditions, back injuries, and others -- that make them unable to undertake the physically stressful tasks of firefighting. Most chose to work in Radio, with its 24-hour shifts, rather than switching to 9-to-5 desk jobs within the Fire Department.
Like regular firefighters, dispatchers are scheduled to work an average of 42 hours a week. That is, they work roughly six 24-hour days a month in four-day cycles -- one 24-hour shift followed by 72 hours off.
Regular firefighters work 24-hour shifts because the nature of the job often requires long hours. Burning buildings don't abide by the conventional work week. The three days off after one day's work give firefighters time to recuperate from a job that is often physically exhausting.
Dispatchers, whose jobs are notably less exhausting, live the same 24-hour lifestyle.
Like regular firefighters, the Radio men take turns cooking and shopping for meals. A well-stocked cupboard in the upstairs hallway contains jumbo-size containers of Folgers coffee, jam, and Bisquick. Plastic bottles of herbs, spices, and sauces line a shelf that spans one kitchen wall.
Dispatchers have stashed sleeping bags above their lockers in the basement, adjacent to the showers and the washer and dryer. Another room houses three beds, two reading lamps, and an alarm clock.
"We're all uniformed personnel; we all come out of a firehouse setting," explains Battalion Chief Mike Morris, who supervises the Communications Center. "You try to make it like home because you spend 24 hours a day here."
In this homey environment, dispatchers became so comfortable that for several years, they ran football pools from the Communications Center. Most notable, perhaps, was 1989's $5,000 Super Bowl pool. That year, other firefighters called in to communications (often using emergency 911 lines) to buy pool squares at $55 apiece. The organizer of the pool kept $500 for himself.
A 1991 city report compiled by the short-lived Improper Government Activities Office (A brain wave of then-Mayor Art Agnos, the office lasted only two years, then crumbled under budget cuts imposed by Agnos' successor, Frank Jordan) revealed that high-ranking members of the department knew about the gambling. The report even found that Battalion Chief Gary Torres, who was then in charge of communications, and Deputy Chief John Boscacci had participated in the Super Bowl pool.
The report further showed that Radio had a significant overtime problem.
Back then, lieutenants who were dispatchers had earned as much as $19,000 above their base pay in 1990 because of a scheduling system that was "open to abuse."
"It creates a situation where officers can 'arrange' to be off on an assigned day so that another officer can earn overtime pay," the report said.
Little came of the report's findings. The gambling pool drew letters of reprimand for the battalion chief and the deputy chief, who have both since retired.
Overtime practices have "improved" since 1991. Dispatch personnel now earn a range of overtime pay -- from $3,000 to $11,000 annually -- that is smaller than the $6,000 to $19,000 range made in 1990. But the Fire Department has made no real attempt to deal with the systemic problems the report highlighted. The report recommended that the Fire Department investigate whether civilianizing Communications Center personnel would save money, both in overtime and in straight pay. But that study never materialized.
The lack of follow-up doesn't surprise one former firefighter.
"If you can make $60,000 to $70,000 a year and not have to inhale smoke, and arrange your vacation any time you want, guys are not going to fight that," he says.
Fire Department officials defend the 24-hour shifts, claiming they have no adverse effects on public safety. But critics of the system disagree.
In most major cities, fire dispatchers work eight- or 12-hour shifts. During that time, they are allowed only short breaks or, in some cities, no breaks at all.
In New York, for example, dispatchers work continuous 12-hour shifts, beginning at 7 a.m. They eat at their consoles, and have no breaks.
Unlike San Francisco's fire communications staff, dispatchers in other cities do not take turns going on daily shopping runs for the evening's meal. And they do not sleep in the middle of the night.
Overtime hours for dispatchers are limited in other cities, to ensure that dispatchers are alert and rested. Oakland dispatchers, who usually work eight-hour shifts, are limited to a total of 12 hours of work each day. The number of overtime hours was recently reduced after a departmental investigation found that an incorrect dispatch by an overworked dispatcher delayed the department's arrival at a fire that ultimately killed a 5-year-old boy.
In San Francisco, unlimited overtime has resulted in dispatchers working consecutive 24-hour shifts -- and often as much as 72 hours in a row. In 1990, Fire Department records show communications staff worked two consecutive 24-hour shifts 217 days out of that year. A survey of more recent records indicates that consecutive shifts still occur regularly. Each overtime shift, lieutenants currently make roughly $440 and firefighters are paid about $379.
Critics worry that with San Francisco's reduced staffing during the middle of the night, a dispatching disaster will eventually happen on this side of the bay. The two or three minutes it takes sleeping dispatchers to rouse themselves and get upstairs to their consoles could be critical in a major emergency.
Most of these critics are current or former firefighters who asked to remain anonymous, wary of the fierce institutional attack the Fire Department has been known to make on dissenters.
But the complaints about featherbedding in parts of the Fire Department are not new, and the proposed remedies are hardly esoteric. There is a way to reduce overtime, increase the numbers of working dispatchers, and cut costs at the Fire Department's Communications Center.
But for the San Francisco Fire Department, that remedy -- civilianization -- is a four-letter word.
Radio has been staffed by firefighters working 24-hour shifts for as long as anyone can recall. Both Fire Department management and the firefighters' union, San Francisco Fire Fighters Local 798, seem pleased with the system. Neither is the least bit inclined to change it.
"We've found it to be the most effective in the 30 years that I've been in the Fire Department," Assistant Deputy Chief Frank Scales says confidently.
But about 90 percent of major metropolitan fire departments across the country now employ highly trained civilians, rather than firefighters, as dispatchers. Emergency communications experts say civilians have proven to be more effective dispatchers than firefighters or police officers because their primary expertise is in what they do -- dispatching.
And even though they are more effective than uniformed counterparts, civilian dispatchers earn less than firefighters or police, whose higher pay is designed to compensate for the dangerous nature of fire- and crime-fighting.
San Francisco Police Department dispatchers manage more than 1 million 911 calls each year, more than three times the volume of calls that fire dispatchers handle. These police dispatchers undergo 10 months of intensive training, compared to the two weeks that fire dispatchers get.
Yet police dispatchers make significantly less than their Fire Department counterparts. Police dispatch salaries range from 7 to 60 percent less than fire dispatcher pay, depending on experience, and Rex Martin, communications director for the San Francisco Police Department, says that there is no logical reason why firefighters should be working as dispatchers.
"Firefighters should be out fighting fires. Police officers should be out fighting crime," says Martin. "That's the most effective use of those personnel."
Although careful not to criticize the San Francisco Fire Department directly, Oakland Fire Battalion Chief Don Parker concurs with Martin's assessment: "In order to be able to take a call, to dispatch the proper people and to follow up -- it's not necessary to have a fully trained firefighter to perform those tasks."
In past years, many emergency dispatch centers were staffed by default. The firefighters working there were on temporary posting, or were rotated through dispatch as trainees. In the case of the San Francisco Fire Department, dispatch centers have historically been repositories for "limited duty" police or firefighters who couldn't do their regular jobs because of illness or injuries.
In most cities, though, dispatchers are now considered specialists in their own right.
The San Francisco Fire Department steadfastly refuses to civilianize dispatching and other non-firefighting jobs, despite the mounds of evidence that support such a move. Each time the idea of civilianization has come up, the Fire Department has given the same answer: Firefighters are the only people capable of handling the job.
As long ago as 1980, city budget analyst Harvey Rose recommended that the Fire Department replace firefighters with civilians in the Communications Center and several other such "non-suppression" units. The report argued that civilian dispatchers could be just as effective as firefighters, but much less costly. Rose projected that his recommendations would save city taxpayers nearly half a million dollars a year -- or roughly $8 million to date in 1997 dollars.
"If the civilians were properly and thoroughly trained, and if the transition from uniformed employees to civilian employees were accomplished gradually, we believe that the quality of services provided would not be adversely affected," the report said.
Predictably, the Fire Department vigorously opposed the concept, claiming that only uniformed firefighters could provide the dispatching necessary to protect property and public.
Today, some 17 years later, the Fire Department's line remains the same.
Assistant Deputy Chief Frank Scales, who manages the Communications Center and all other Fire Department support services, says the SFFD has no intention of installing civilians in dispatch.
"A civilian does not have the sensitivity of a firefighter," Scales says. "When you have a system that is working properly, you do not gamble with the citizens of San Francisco's lives just because you want to try another system."
The San Francisco Fire Department is under no obligation -- legally or logically -- to provide limited or light-duty positions for injured or disabled firefighters. As Rex Martin, the veteran S.F. police dispatcher, observes, "Many departments don't have light-duty positions. Either you're able to perform full time at full capacity, or you're off on worker's comp or a rehab program."
But the Fire Department keeps plenty of "light" assignments around. Several of those cushy, high-paying jobs are associated with the vague Fire Department operation known as the Jones Street Tank.
Seven firefighters man the Jones Street operation, which is staffed in rotating 24-hour shifts, just like the Communications Center.
But the tasks at Jones Street are even more amorphous than the light dispatching duty that goes on amid the cooking and sleeping at the Communications Center. The Jones Street operation provides firefighters with help during large fires. In such situations, tank operators will turn valves that increase the water supply available from fire hydrants near a particular blaze.
Most of the time, though, the job requirements at the Jones Street Tank are minimal (so minimal that one of the tank operators was spotted planting a garden outside the station and trimming leaves during a recent shift).
The Fire Department has difficulty saying exactly what employees at the Jones Street Tank do during the long stretches of time when multialarm fires are not in progress, beyond monitoring three major water tanks used by the Fire Department for leaks.
The Jones Street jobs pay full firefighters' wages. Even though superiors struggle to describe what Jones Street workers do with most of their time, those workers receive generous overtime pay.
But it is almost to be expected that the Fire Department would pay overtime for vaguely defined, ephemeral "work." Abuse of overtime seems to be a Fire Department tradition.
A 1994 civil grand jury said the Fire Department's overtime costs were, quite simply, out of control. The grand jury's report cited several examples from the previous year: The department's fireboat pilots and marine engineers were making as much as 33 percent more than their base salaries in overtime and holiday pay. A similar situation held with the Fire Department's training staff.
"The Civil Grand Jury was surprised at the intensity with which SFFD personnel have traditionally manipulated a loosely controlled system of compensation to enhance their income," the report said. "The drive for overtime pay, particularly that resulting from working on holidays, has so permeated the Department that it has become part of the culture of the SFFD.
"Further, there seems to be a perceived need to make sure that everyone gets their 'fair share' of overtime and holiday pay."
Recent records seem to show that not much has changed. As recently as last year, some dispatchers increased their earnings by as much as 21 percent through overtime.
A former employee has a cultural explanation for these excesses. "There is no management," says the source. "It's just a boys club, and you just can't do much wrong."
At the San Francisco Fire Department, several observers say, cost-ineffective labor practices are defended as "necessary." Low-output jobs and overtime are perceived as a right. And the protection of privilege also seems to be a tradition.
In November 1994, a retired firefighter raised serious questions about the Fire Department's labor practices. He alleged that the department's personnel office had falsified timecards, so lieutenants were paid for 40-hour work weeks, even though they actually had worked just 26 hours a week.
The retiree further alleged that Fire Department employees were paid for holidays they did not work. As proof, he provided the time sheets for himself and three other employees who were paid for working Thanksgiving, even though they did not.
The Fire Commission referred the allegations to the City Attorney's Office, which promptly initiated a vigorous investiga-tion that was run by -- none other than the Fire Department's own attorney, Art Greenberg.
The department's subsequent actions suggest that the allegations were in fact correct. In a memo to then-Chief Joseph Medina, dated March 23, 1995, the head of the Bureau of Personnel said the work week for lieutenants in personnel would be increased to 40 hours a week -- as Medina had ordered.
"I have added one hour per day to the current shift to effect an immediate increase," wrote Battalion Chief Richard Seyler. "We will continue to explore ideas for a better schedule."
City Attorney Louise Renne denied a request, filed under the state's Public Records Act, for her office's report on the alleged falsifications, claiming that "attorney-client privilege" prevents its release, unless her clients acquiesce. Renne considers the Fire Department, rather than the general public, to be her client in this matter. The department won't release the report, claiming the same "attorney-client" reasons.
Deputy Fire Chief Harold Gamble seems genuinely surprised to hear that dispatchers have been doing well by working overtime.
"I'm aware that they have to work overtime from time to time, due to someone being ill or on vacation," Gamble says but insists he was unaware that significant overtime was being claimed. He vowed to "look into" the overtime situation at the Communications Center.
And if anything is to be done about dispatching overtime, Gamble will probably have to do it. The city government's attitude toward the Fire Department's system of labor management is almost as lackadaisical as the department's own. City officials have historically deferred to the Fire Department to manage its administrative operations. In fact, the city has ignored the law by ignoring management problems at the Fire Department.
A 1995 city law requires city departments to account for their overtime spending. Under that ordinance, departments must submit reports to the Board of Supervisors each May 1 and Oct. 1, justifying overtime payments that exceed either $1 million, or 5 percent of total regular wages. The law includes Muni and the Police and Fire departments. Departments are also required to provide city administrators with analysis that would show whether hiring additional employees might be less expensive than continuing to pay overtime.
In 1995 and 1996, public records show the Fire Department paid its employees overtime money totaling 9 percent of the $89 million it paid in regular salaries. That 9 percent included staffing for the city's 41 firehouses, but it also covered the much less crucial overtime hours worked by non-suppression staff.
The Fire Department has, quite simply, failed to file the overtime reports the law requires. And the Board of Supervisors, which adopted the law, has not bothered to ask for them.
In the face of this apparent indifference, it's easy to see how the department's inefficiencies have gone uncorrected for so long. Soon, though, the decades-old system of dispatch-by-firefighter will come under siege.
Plans are under way for a new city communications center, estimated to cost $67 million. The center, which will consolidate police, fire, and paramedic dispatching services, is scheduled to open in 1999.
The city officials planning the new system want its dispatchers to be cross-trained, so they can dispatch all emergency services -- fire, police, and paramedic. And if these city officials have their way, all the new dispatchers will be civilians.
But seasoned observers consider such an outcome to be extremely unlikely. They note that the city administration has had its way so rarely with the Fire Department through the years as to be charged, quite reasonably, with sleeping on the job.
