FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) - On Oct. 27, Flagstaff Fire Capt. Marc Goldberg rode in a fire engine for the last time as his crew delivered him home.
It’s tradition that when a firefighter is retiring, their crew drives them home one last time.
Before he retired, Goldberg was a firefighter for over 30 years, 25 of them with the Flagstaff Fire Department. But since March, Goldberg said, it has felt like he has worked five more years on top of that.
That’s because COVID-19 has kept the Fire Department busier than usual, while forcing some firefighters to the sideline of an already understaffed department, the Arizona Daily Sun reported.
So far this year, the department has seen at least six firefighters test positive for COVID-19, said Fire Chief Mark Gaillard. That often means several other firefighters quarantining for as long as 14 days in case they, too, have the virus.
Goldberg said he tested positive and recovered in July.
In the last week of October, the department had six staff quarantining as they either recovered from COVID or because they had a risky exposure to it, Gaillard wrote in an email.
One of those firefighters was Fire Capt. Bobby Parker, who was recovering from the virus.
In early October, Parker said he was using vacation days when he came down with what he first assumed was a head cold. But the cold didn’t go away, so he isolated himself.
Parker said his case was fairly mild, but even so , it put him out of action for the rest of the month.
“More than anything I needed the time to recover. I was only symptomatic for seven days or so, but I was still kind of beat down, and I still had that burning in my chest if I exercised or anything. So I just needed some extra time to kind of get well again,” Parker said.
Parker, who works out of Fire Station No. 2, returned to the department on Monday.
According to Gaillard, most firefighters who have tested positive don’t appear to have picked up the virus as they have conducted their work. Instead, most cases have been linked to community spread.
Earlier this year, Flagstaff Medical Center officials told a similar story. Even considering healthcare workers who worked with COVID-positive patients, cases among staff were most often linked to the spread of the virus outside the hospital.
Serving downtown, east Flagstaff and Route 66, Fire Station No. 2 is the busiest in the city and the only station with two rescue units based out of it.
But last month, enough firefighters were in quarantine that the station didn’t have personnel to staff the second unit.
When a unit goes down, calls it would have picked up don’t stop coming. That leaves remaining stations busier than ever, said Casey Gonzalez, president of the firefighters union.
All the while, the call volume to which they respond has spiked. Gonzalez said the number of calls the department receives has steadily increased by about 1,000 a year. This year is even higher than expected.
Just in October, call volume was up between 15% and 30%, and, according to Gaillard, the department is on pace to crest an all-time high of 15,000 incidents in 2020.
“Flag Fire is probably on track for having the highest call volume in its history for a 12-month period — which is remarkable, because if you recall, at the beginning of the virus it was eerily quiet,” Gaillard said.
Given that higher volume, Gonzalez said it has not been unusual for a crew to get as many as 30 calls within a 24-hour period. With calls lasting between 15 minutes to an hour, and the time to drive there, Gonzalez said it feels like firefighters barely have time to catch their breath.
“You’re just constantly running. It just it takes its toll,” Gonzalez said.
On top of that, firefighters are getting fewer days off to recover. As the department has seen personnel forced into quarantine, it has struggled to maintain minimum staffing requirements.
“You’re getting called back into work because it’s your turn. So you just ran 30 calls for that day and now you’re there for the next day,” Gonzalez said. “It just it wears you down and takes a toll on home life, too.”
Goldberg said even during his last week with the department, he worked three mandatory days that he would normally have off, illustrating just how short-staffed the department is currently.
“So considering our system, I’m pretty senior. But for that mandatory to make it to me, it has to go through a lot of other people. And it needed to come to me three times in seven days,” Goldberg said.
The pandemic has made the job harder and more stressful as well, Goldberg said.
“I feel like it’s made the stress tenfold because everything becomes harder. I just cannot emphasize enough: we already have been understaffed and underequipped. That’s not a new phenomenon,” Goldberg said. “But what (COVID-19) does is it takes it and it puts it on steroids, because every little thing becomes exponentially harder.”
For every call, they are now dawning extra equipment and remembering to ask extra questions, Goldberg said. Moreover, there is the stress of worrying about whether they did everything right, whether the person they assisted was COVID positive.
The added stress from COVID, higher call volumes and fewer days to recover was all on Goldberg’s mind as he was driven home on the last day of his career.
“I just looked around at the gloves, the masks, eyeglasses. (…) And I’m looking at all the calls that are listed on the (mobile computer) that I just ran in the last 48 hours and I just gave thanks to God, like, ’Thank you for getting me here to the end. And I’ve had COVID. I had it. So I’m just glad I’m alive.”
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