Providence Fire Dept. reallocating resources to fill vacancies

December 5, 2015 8:38 pm

By: Rebecca Turco

Email: news@abc6.com

PROVIDENCE – The Providence Fire Department reallocated its resources Saturday after not enough firefighters showed up to work.

Though there is a discrepancy in how many personnel were actually missing.

The Fire Department is supposed to have 94 firefighters on-duty all of the time and eleven people were missing from Saturday’s evening shift, according to Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Pare. He says the off-duty firefighters were contacted to fill-in, and they all refused.

Paul Doughty, the president of the city’s firefighters’ union, however, says there were 18 vacancies in the evening shift, as well as four fire trucks out of service.

Pare tells ABC6 News the department’s resources were shuffled around so that every station had personnel. He assured that response time and efficient would still remain to the highest level.