WORCESTER, Mass. — Big changes could be coming to Worcester’s fire department. The city has confirmed plans to hire a professional fire service consultant to analyze the department in the hopes of preventing tragedies like they’ve seen in recent years.
Memorials at Worcester Fire’s headquarters depict a department that’s been plagued by tragedy. The city’s fire chief acknowledges that nine firefighter deaths in just two decades is a lot compared to other departments across the country.
“Unfortunately yeah, the nine firefighters over 20 years is high,” said Worcester Fire Chief Michael Lavoie. “And it is devastating to us.”
Six firefighters died battling the cold storage fire in 1999, Christopher Roy was killed in the line of duty in 2018 and, less than one year later, Jason Menard perished in a triple-decker fire. Now the city is looking to a third party to help them figure out what more can be done to prevent these heartbreaking deaths.
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The consultant will assess the department’s operations, staffing, training and more, comparing Worcester’s standards to other fire departments across the nation. The department’s training facility is just one of the many areas the consulting group will be analyzing.
“Rather than pick and choose, ‘do we need more manpower? Do we need another fire station? Do we need another fire truck?’ we can look at it globally once we get the report and we can understand where we need to go and how we need to get there,” Chief Lavoie said, adding that the department responds to some 1,500 fires each year.
Chief Lavoie hopes the changes that come from the consultant’s review will help protect firefighters for generations to come.
“None of our firefighters die in vain,” he said. “We learn from every fire. We’ve learned from Chris Roy’s fire, we’ve learned from Jason’s fire [and] we are taking steps to correct the problem.”
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The fire chief added that the conditions his firefighters face are more dangerous than what they would encounter in other cities.
“We have 5,000-plus 100-year-old three-deckers in the city, which are balloon-framed,” he said. “Which means if a fire starts in the basement, it can go right up the walls into the attic in minutes.”
The city manager’s office says they have put out a bid for a professional fire service consultant. They hope to select the consultant by March and expect it to cost about $100,000.
“After signing a contract, we will be looking at six to eight months before getting a final report,” said Michael Vigneux, the city’s media relations specialist. “Any required payments in Fiscal Year 2020 will be made from available departmental or contingency funds. Costs in Fiscal Year 2021 will be included in the Fiscal Year 2021 budget.”