ANSONIA – Ansonia Fire Chief Jay Fainer led an effort to close two fire houses on the city’s west end, a change he and other department leaders say was needed due to reduced volunteer numbers.
In an interview July 15, Fainer spoke about the recent closure of the Charters’ and Fountains’ fire houses, which has brought the city down from five operating firehouses to three.
The department placed two engines out of service earlier this year as part of the consolidation. Although the Charters and Fountains still exist as fire companies, its members respond to calls from other firehouses.
Fainer said the department needs to centralize because it has fewer numbers than it did in years past.
“Across the country, there’s a drop in volunteerism. It really hit us starting with COVID, we really felt it after COVID. That was sort of an inflection point,” Fainer said.
The Ansonia Fire Department had 77 members in 2021, according to Fainer. A year later, that number halved to 36.
While the department is now up to 42 members, Fainer said it’s unrealistic to expect enough volunteers to keep the city’s five firehouses staffed.
“When I joined in 1997, someone had to step down to let me into the Charters. Now, not a single firehouse in the city is at their max number. We’re not even close,” Fainer said. “I think if we put all of our members together, we wouldn’t max out one firehouse.”
Fainer has led the department since July last year. He’s supported in the consolidation push by Anthony DeLucia, the department’s deputy chief and next-in-line to lead once Fainer’s term expires in 2027, as well as the department’s assistant chiefs and fire commissioners, who have all voted for the moves toward consolidation.
Charters, Fountains Firehouses Unmanned
The Charters Hose Co. #4 on Murray Street and the Fountain Hose Co. #1 on Howard Avenue used to be home bases for responding to fires on Ansonia’s west side.
However, both have struggled with staffing for years. They had just eight members between them when Fainer became chief, with two of those members being driver-only.
Figuring out the best way to respond to west side calls is a puzzle that goes back decades, according to Fainer.
For around 20 years, the Fountains and Charters received help from the Eagle Hose H&L Co. on Main Street when responding to daytime calls. However, response to nighttime calls still primarily came from the two west side companies.
Then, by around 2017, Fainer said that arrangement was no longer feasible. Since then, most west side calls during both the day and the night have involved a response from across town.
And as membership declined, so too did the state of the firehouses. Fainer said repairs have been put off because it’s difficult to justify putting money into them.
“The Fountains, their chimney collapsed. So right now they have no heat, no water, no anything, and it’s over $10,000 to fix it for a firehouse that doesn’t have an operating fire engine and two active members. It’s not in the cards to make that $10,000 repair when there’s nobody there,” Fainer said.
He described the process of maintaining the five firehouses as “a lot of Band-Aids to keep things working.”
“The Charters has a leaking roof. It’s been fixed like three times, but it keeps leaking and it’s causing water damage on the meeting room floor,” Fainer said.
The two firehouses have been unmanned since Jan. 1 this year. Fainer said the change hasn’t impacted response times, since in reality most responses already came from the three firehouses on the east side of the city. He said Naugatuck, a larger department, is able to effectively respond to calls with only two firehouses.
“Naugatuck is our closest career department to us. They are three times our size and run with two firehouses and an eight-member staff,” Fainer said. “So if Naugatuck can cover all of that with their paid department with two firehouses and eight firefighters on staff, we can cover a third of the size with three firehouses and three engines.”
He pointed out that Ansonia’s responses are quicker than the average across New Haven County – about 5 minutes and 18 seconds in Ansonia, versus about 5 minutes and 54 seconds for the county as a whole, according to data from Darley Data Center, a firm which specializes in providing information to fire departments.
Fainer said that ideally, Ansonia firefighters would all be based out of a single firehouse. He said he’d like to see one built at the former SHW site on 35 N. Main St., where the city is also in negotiations to get fuel cells built.
“If I had my way, we would get rid of all the buildings, because they’re 100 years old. And right next to the fuel cell, I’d build me a nice, brand new firehouse that we could take everything and put it in that one central firehouse,” Fainer said.
Leadership Could Undergo Changes
Fainer has also appeared at recent meetings of the charter revision commission to ask for a change in how the department handles promotions under the city’s charter.
Currently, each of the five companies elects a chief. Those chiefs are then placed on a rotation, where the most senior one becomes chief of the full department for two years. The second-most senior chief serves as second-in-command. The three other chiefs serve as assistant chiefs.
After the department chief serves out their term, they’re removed from the rotation and their company elects a new chief to enter into it.
Fainer, himself a member of the Charters, said the system has a number of issues. For one, he said it effectively works as a popularity contest within each of the firehouses.
“Whoever is the most popular guy at the Charters, when they have the election – which, if they were to have the election again, it certainly wouldn’t be me, I’m not really everybody’s favorite – but it’d be a popularity contest,” Fainer said.
He said the system should be more merit-based going forward. That would require a charter change.
“You meet all the requirements and maybe there’s a test, maybe it’s a job interview, but it will be the best person from the department, versus the most popular person from the company,” Fainer said.
Fainer also said some smaller charter changes are needed to reflect language updates – for example, his title under the charter is technically “chief engineer” of the department, while the deputy and assistant chiefs are all technically “assistant engineers” according to charter language.
No charter changes concerning the fire department have been formally proposed yet. Any changes would need to be approved by voters at a ballot referendum.
Public hearings would also need to be held before any charter changes can be sent to voters. The deadline for the Aldermen to send charter questions to the ballot is Sept. 4, according to Ansonia Town & City Clerk Beth Lynch.