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Lompoc fire chief says Rescue 51 will be 'browned out' as department trains engineers
Summary
City officials said the two-person rescue truck (Rescue 51) will be taken out of service on days the department cannot staff a qualified engineer; the fire department estimates 60–90 days in a best-case timeframe to qualify current trainees.
Councilmember Jeremy Ball pressed city staff about how the planned brownout of Rescue 51 would affect emergency response. Kevin Shea, who the city manager identified before Shea spoke, said the department has entered phase two of a staffing-shortage plan and does not have enough qualified driver-operator engineers to staff the two-person rescue truck full time.
"We have entered into phase 2 of our engineer staffing shortage plan," Shea said, and explained the engineer training process is comprehensive. "Permanent. So brownouts will not be every day. Every day that we have the ability to staff it, it will be in service. When we do not have personnel available, those are the days when it would be browned out," he said, estimating a best-case timeframe of about "60 to 90 days" for current trainees to complete qualifications.
Shea added that the department will rely on mutual-aid agreements with Santa Barbara County Fire Station 34 to cover concurrent calls during brownouts; historically Rescue 51 provided additional versatility to handle calls in-house. Councilmembers asked whether hiring additional firefighters would solve the issue immediately and Shea said the bottleneck is the specialized driver-operator/engineer qualification, which can take up to a year to complete.
Next steps: staff said they will continue recruitment and training and will report back to council with operational impacts and further timing updates.
