Firetrucks were put out of service at three stations - in Avondale, at fire headquarters downtown and in the West End.

Chief Robert Wright and City Manager Valerie Lemmie issued their plan last week to prevent the department from going more than $2 million over budget this year.

When firefighters call in sick or are otherwise not at work, the city will put companies out of service instead of paying others overtime to cover their shifts. The city plans to continue the so-called brownouts through the end of the year.

The brownouts can happen every day, depending on how many firefighters are off work each day. Wright promised that he would not brown out more than six of the city's 40 fire companies at any one time.

The city said it chose the six firehouses for rotating brownouts because each house has more than one piece of equipment in it, meaning that the idling of one truck would not shut down the entire station.

INFOGRAPHIC

• Brownout locations (PDF file)

But firefighters say that's disingenuous because each truck has specific equipment on it. Ladder companies, for example, could be first at a fire and rescue people, but they don't carry any hose and therefore cannot spray water.

Union President Joe Diebold said the union's executive board would meet with its lawyer to talk about possible legal action against the city. Wright, in a written statement, fired back at the union, saying the emergency measure was a direct result of "the high number'' of firefighters using both scheduled and unscheduled leave.

"Now (the union's) use of inflammatory language serves to only make a difficult situation worse,'' the Wright statement said.

What the union said it didn't count on were some related issues, which it claims heightened the risk Thursday:

• Engine Co. 35 from Westwood was in training andanother truck was out of service being repaired. Engine Co. 14 from downtown - also the department's hazardous materials and decontamination unit - was assigned all day to the detail protecting first lady Laura Bush. That meant two trucks from that firehouse were not usable for responding to calls.

• Firefighters usually assigned to the three idled trucks and fire engines were sent elsewhere after they showed up to work at 7 a.m. Thursday for their 24-hour shifts. During the time they traveled to their new assignments, Diebold said, 11 more firetrucks had fewer than the required four firefighters on each.

He said federal and state recommendations, plus the union's contract with the city, say four firefighters must be on an apparatus before they can go into a fire - two to go in and two to stay outside in case the first two need rescuing.

Without the four, Diebold said, "they would have to sit and watch it burn.''

The union filed a grievance contesting what Diebold said was a violation of the four-firefighter mandate. Wright said the contract allows companies to temporarily have three members.

Wright said the union could have agreed to other concessions that would have avoided brownouts. Those were: transferring personnel from other duties to firefighting units; controlling compensatory time usage to minimize overtime; and giving up their "kelly'' days. Because firefighters work 24 hours, then have 48 off, their days off rotate. Every third week, their "kelly'' day allows them five days off in a row.

Diebold, standing at the Forest Avenue firehouse behind the Avondale Town Center, where Ladder Co. 32 sat idle, called the city's actions a "nonchalant approach to providing safety.

"While we count on our city to protect all of us, today she has turned her back,'' he said.

The brownouts prompted the companies that were in service to, in some cases, travel farther to respond to calls.

About 11 a.m. in Avondale, Engine Co. 32 responded from Winton Place to the call of a woman in respiratory distress. They would usually call for help from the other truck in their station, which was out of service. They responded anyway but said it took about five minutes more than it would have if Ladder Co. 32 had been available.

When a fire alarm prompted the evacuation of the 25-story Enquirer building at Third and Elm streets about 3 p.m., a ladder company responded from the West End. The closer ladder company at Fifth Street and Central Avenue was browned out.

City officials say those kinds of moves happen every day when various pieces of equipment are busy on calls.

Some firefighters started wearing brown ribbons on their shirts to show their opposition. A ribbon hung on the outside of the union office downtown.

One firefighter hung a banner, with a For Sale sign next to it, outside a downtown firehouse that said the station was closed. It was quickly taken down.

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com