BANGOR, Maine — The firefighters at Bangor’s Central Station marked the 22nd anniversary of the September 11th attacks with a work coat draped under a flag and a demand: that the city they work for treat them with more respect.
“You know, we’re only going to put up with so much,” Jared Willey, the president of the IAFF Local 772—the union representing Bangor’s firefighters—said on Monday.
Willey estimates the Bangor Fire Department is 12 firefighters short of being fully staffed—a fact which has forced many on staff to work overtime, sometimes twice the normal 48-hour weekly schedule. This, in turn, has worn down crews already weathered by the COVID-19 pandemic and a rise in opioid deaths, which can be emotionally challenging calls to respond to.
Brian Cochrane, who works in the Bangor Fire Department and has at times struggled with this increased burden placed in his hands, has noticed a new problem has come to the station.
"Positive morale has become a thing of the past,” Cochrane said Monday, “The fire service we once knew is lost. I fear that this isn’t just departmentally but also nationally.”
Both Cochrane and Willey believe the root of the staffing problem is a lack of competitive pay—an issue the union raised before the city council, advocating for American Rescue Plan Act funds to go towards increased salaries. The council voted against the effort.
“There isn’t a solution out there that’s going to fix this that doesn’t cost money,” Willey said in response to the decision, which he says is responsible for an exodus of firefighters to other departments that pay more.
But some within city government say the current salary and benefits offered to new firefighters in Bangor are reasonable and that the staffing issue will be overcome in time.
“We do realize we’re in a bit of a cycle right now. But what I also know is given time we will come out of this cycle,” Bangor City Manager Debbie Laurie said.
As for the fatigue caused by so many empty positions, Laurie added, “I believe there is a small group of employees that is volunteering for all this additional overtime.”
Whether equally distributed or not, the firefighters at Central station say those extra hours need to come from somewhere for the city’s residents to be served.
As Cochrane puts it, “unlike most jobs where the motto is ‘work like your life depends on it’ here, as a first responder we literally have to work like our lives depend on it, because they do.”