Coventry Fire and EMS say they are in dire straits

COVENTRY, R.I. (WLNE) –Understaffed, underpaid, and dealing with life-or-death situations.

That’s the situation at Coventry EMS and fire, and they’re looking to make a change.

Coventry Fire and EMS works with only around a dozen people for the entire town spread across four stations some days.

And when a call comes in it can clear out the building.

It’s a common problem in Coventry.

The town is split into four separate fire districts with their own rules, and their own taxes, but a few similar issues.

“You only can imagine, a lot of times during the day, it even happened again today, where all four rescues were out on a call,” Central Coventry and Hopkins Hill Fire Chief Frank Brown said. “So, as I said we have 12 guys, four trucks are out, we only had four guys for the town.”

Being a firefighter is already a dangerous job, but with staffing levels like this, it can turn a tough job into a deadly one.

“So, you know, we had a really serious fire the other night,” Councilman Jonathan Pascua said. “We had an apartment building fire, we had people trapped in a second floor. And this isn’t an exaggeration, this is the truth, had that fire been just a short while later when the rescues were out…we would have been pulling dead bodies out of that building.”

But Pascua and Brown have a solution in mind: merging the four fire districts into one municipal fire department.

“Municipality is the way to go,” Brown said. “One tax rate for across the board and the same level of service for everybody, across the board. I mean, we don’t have four police departments. We don’t have four department of public works.”

Pascua seems confident they have the support for the change, but it will take time.

“A fire in Providence doesn’t burn any different than it does in Coventry, but if you look at the different communities and their staffing level, the more people you can put at it, the safer it gets for everybody,” Brown said.

One major concern Brown mentioned for residents was tax changes.

He explained that currently Coventry pays a fire tax which changes depending on the district.

The switch to a municipal department would get rid of the separate fire tax and put it into the property taxes through the town.

There’s also a meeting on April 4 to discuss funding to get another truck back into service.