In defense of four-man fire crews
Getting serious about Fire Department staffing reform
It’s been about two months since I wrote about how we should reprioritize the Fire Department to better address Chicago’s emergency response needs. The city and the firefighters’ union have yet to come to a deal, and firefighters still don’t have a contract. That’s unfortunate.
Reporting last week from the Sun-Times sheds some light on why the wait continues, indicating that Mayor Johnson is actually seeking to “reshape the Chicago Fire Department to handle emergency medical assistance demands.” Their reporting also includes commentary from union president Pat Cleary on the issue of fire response staffing and variances, which had previously been reported as a sticking point:
Firefighters union President Pat Cleary said the Johnson administration wants to double the number of daily variances to at least 70. The union wants five fewer variances. “He wants a variance in every double-house. Every firehouse that has an engine and a truck, he only wants nine people working there instead of 10,” Cleary said. “He wants to make it worse — not better. … He wants to make our jobs more dangerous — and I’m not going to let him.”
This is a pretty interesting contrast with Tribune coverage in early April, which reported that the Mayor wasn’t inclined to play hardball with the union on reorganizing the department. It’s also clearly a step in the right direction.
That said, I haven’t seen very much reporting or commentary offering a defense on *why* exactly more variances or fewer personnel fighting fires is a good idea. I thought somebody should. So here we are.
Is four-person staffing safe?
First, a quick run-through of what we’re talking about here. Firefighter staffing in Chicago is governed by the collective bargaining agreement between the City and the Firefighters’ Union. While the last CBA expired nearly four years ago, the terms of that CBA - including those related to staffing - remain in effect until a new deal is agreed upon.1 Section 16.4(A) of the CBA2 outlines minimum manning requirements for the fire suppression and rescue division and requires the Department to staff 5 men on all trucks, engines and squad companies. The Department is allowed3 to employ 35 daily “variances” from those requirements, meaning that every day up to 35 trucks/engines/squads can be staffed by a team of only four instead of five.
In a national context, a universal five-person company standard is high. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recommends a minimum four-person staffing standard for fire suppression companies, with five necessary in cases of “high volume/geographic restriction” areas. Most big cities I could find data on typically follow that four-person standard. Houston and Boston both maintain four-person companies. Los Angeles and Philadelphia both use four-person companies on their engines and five-person companies on their ladder trucks. The only major universal exceptions are Chicago and New York City, which both use five-person companies as their standard for companies.
Most studies I could find were fairly supportive of the four-person crew standard as well. A 2010 study from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) showed a huge difference in a crew’s response abilities when moving from 3-man crews to 4- or 5-man crews, but showed fairly similar response abilities for 4- and 5-man crews. The main exception to this was in response to high-rise fires. A 2013 NIST study did show dramatically better performance by 5-man crews. I also couldn’t find any data showing a difference in safety standards to the firefighters themselves between a 4- or 5-man crew.4
That 2013 study pretty clearly supports why a higher standard makes sense in New York, where you’ve got a ton of high rises and skyscrapers with truly unparalleled density compared to the rest of the United States. But outside of River North or the Loop, most of Chicago doesn’t look much like Manhattan. Given that, while maintaining 5-man crews in certain neighborhoods seems important, it doesn’t make sense to hold the entire city to that standard. As we’ve written about before, over 40 percent of Chicago is zoned for single-family housing. Those areas further from our downtown core are similar enough to Philadelphia or Boston that the same four-person crews they use should suffice.
It’s also important to point out that this doesn’t mean that we’d simply be down to four firefighters responding to any fire. Most fires in Chicago involve multi-unit response. I live in Ukrainian Village and happened to be outside near where this house fire was going on back in March of this year. This was just a single-family home, but I counted over 20 vehicles of some kind responding (and CBS references five trucks having hose lines on the fire). It’s likely that we’d need to rely on multi-unit response even more with fewer personnel per company, but that reliance also reduces the risk our individual firefighters would face.
It’s also worth looking at general trends in fire safety. As I’ve shared before, national trends show fire risk getting a lot better over the past few decades:
Thankfully, recent trends in Chicago agree, with a pretty clear decline in annual fire deaths since 2000:
None of this is to ignore the very real risk that firefighters face. These are heroic public servants who put their lives on the line every day they go to work. We only have to look back a few weeks to the tragic death of Captain David Meyer to be reminded of that. But while these dedicated public workers deserve our respect and our gratitude - and a fair deal from the city that employs them - those risks don’t negate the reality that the city still needs to take a thoughtful approach to staffing levels that adequately deals with the tradeoffs between fire suppression and other civic priorities.
We’re talking about real money here
And those staffing levels come at a real cost. Back in 2011 and 2012, the Inspector General’s office put together reports on various savings and revenue options for the City of Chicago5, which included changing to four-person fire apparatus staffing. Their analysis was really straightforward to walk through6, so I was able to recreate it for 2025 as well:
At present, our 164 fire suppression apparatus teams require around 6.88 million employee-hours to staff every year, assuming the city uses its 35 daily variances every day.7 If we shift to a four-person standard and eliminate those daily variances, our total employee-hours needed to fully staff all teams falls to 5.75 million employee-hours per year. What does that equate to in dollars?
The IG assumed that every firefighter assigned to a fire suppression or rescue unit worked an average of 2,048 hours per year.8 Given that assumption, the difference in total hours here equates to around 550 fewer positions. Per the 2025 city budget, the average firefighter salary for Chicago is around $95,985, and if I use the IG’s same assumptions for non-salary and fringe benefit compensation, the average firefighter’s total compensation is around $154,500 per year.9 Given that, 550 fewer positions means around $85 million in cost savings from shifting to a four-man staffing standard.
That’s a lot of money!
Realistically, though, I am doubtful the city would fully adopt four-man companies for every single apparatus; Cleary’s commentary referred to firehouses with both an engine and a truck having one of their two teams use a four-man approach. Given that, I ran the numbers for a hybrid option as well, where the city just expands to 75 variances (which would allow nearly half of all companies to adopt 4-man staffing). The savings are obviously smaller, but that would still save the city around $26 million per year in labor cost savings. Again, that’s real money - and it’s money that could be better spent on other priorities, like helping to fund new ambulances (or the CFU employees who’ll staff them).
At some point, we have to choose
Ultimately, it comes down to this: tradeoffs are real. I can understand why the firefighters’ union doesn’t want this to be true, but that doesn’t mean it’s not. The city shouldn’t shy away from this fight. Our current approach makes emergency response services more expensive than they need to be, and less able to evolve with the needs of the public. It also deprives us of extra budget flexibility we’re very much going to need this fall (and in future years). If the city blinks now, we’re just setting ourselves up for a bigger fight later this year.
As we’ve argued in a variety of different policy areas, we seem to keep ignoring that in favor of wishful thinking, a bias towards the status quo, and an everything-bagel approach to prioritization. That’s not something Chicago can keep affording to do. This new contract is as good a place as any to start.
The Sun-Times reporting indicates that the union and city are headed to arbitration to try and resolve their impasse on remaining contract issues. Whether that resolution includes the 70+ daily variances the city’s looking for will make a big difference on our ability to adequately address our future public safety and budget challenges. I urge the city to hold the line on these variances, and help us get the contract that the public deserves.
One important exception: the wage increases which will come out of whatever deal is eventually signed between the city and the union will include retroactive pay for prior years that firefighters have gone without any pay raises. The city has been budgeting for this in our annual budget.
Per Section 16.4(D)
Because I think this bit is important: to be clear, I couldn’t find any data showing no difference, either; I simply couldn’t find any data on this question.
Sidenote: apart from CFD reform, they have lots of other good ideas too!
See page 20 of the PDF (page 17 of the actual document) in the 2012 report here.
164 teams x 5 per team x 24 hours per day x 365 days = 7,183,200 hours. Reduce this by 35 daily variances (35 x 24 x 365) and you get 6,876,600 hours.
Firefighters work 4 24-hour shifts in a 15 day period, which equates to 97.33 24-hour shifts per year. They also get 12 24-hour vacation days, bringing them to 85.33 work days per year. This equates to 2048 hours per year.
Specifics: The 2025 Annual Appropriation Ordinance had 2,617 budgeted positions for firefighters in fire suppression and rescue with an average salary of $95,985.08. The IG assumed an average fringe benefit cost per firefighter is 43% of salary and the average non-salary compensation was 18% of salary.
Brilliant analysis.