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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.
