Shortage of 50,000 firefighters

Japan Press Weekly

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Shortage of 50,000 firefighters

Emergency personnel like firefighters and ambulance crew are local public employees. They protect people's lives. However, relaxations of regulations since 2000 are causing many fire stations to face a serious understaffing problem. Furthermore, the 2005 deregulation allowed firefighters to also be ambulance attendants.

Under the guidelines on Japan's fire defense capability, the number of firefighters required in Japan is 206,367. The actual number, in fact, is only 156,758, resulting in a shortage fire crew of 49,609. The guidelines also stipulate that a fire truck requires five firefighters and that an ambulance needs at least three emergency staff.

A staff member of the Kyoto City Fire Department, however, confessed, "Only four firefighters here in our city get on a fire-pumping truck. One is the driver, one is the captain. So only with two people, we must work for fire-fighting hose. Until we discharge water, we need a few minutes longer than that when three people prepare the hose for fire extinction. You know, in these few minutes, the flames may be spreading rapidly."

The situation is much worse in local fire stations. The Tobi Fire Office in Okayama Prefecture has one fire engine, one ambulance, and five staff members. An ambulance car needs three staff under the guidelines. So, if a fire occurs while the ambulance is out on call, only two people get on a fire engine to go to the fire site. One is a driver, of course. A staff member said, "We go to the site anyway but cannot do anything because we are only two. So, we wait 15 minutes or more for help from other fire houses. I regret to say that there have been some cases in which we could have saved more lives if the number of firefighters had been adequate." In this district, only one staff member is stationed at an operations center to answer emergency calls at night although there are 30 telephone lines, which is in effect the same as just one telephone line working.

The time needed for an ambulance to arrive at a site has become 100 seconds longer compared to ten years ago. The percentage of cases in which firemen actually start spraying water within five minutes from receiving an emergency call has decreased by half from 32.5 to 14.1 percent, and the percentage of cases taking more than 20 minutes from receiving a call has doubled to 3.6 from 1.9 percent.

Do you still believe that the number of public employees should be reduced?

- Akahata, July 16, 2010