Brookfield Fire Chief David Masirovits and officials from other departments have been discussing how they can help out Vienna Fire Department, which has had to lay off fire and medical staff due to missing money.
Masirovits said Brookfield is not the answer to the problem, but he pledged the department will help out when it can.
He said fire officials recently met “regarding call volume and who’s handling what and how we’re gonna do it. We’ve come up with a couple ideas.”
Vienna will adjust its mutual aid agreements to have more departments respond more quickly to potentially serious incidents.
“That’s gonna be a fluid situation,” Masirovits told the trustees April 29. “We’re gonna cover the calls that we can, and we’re gonna split with Howland and Liberty and Fowler when they’re available.”
The firefighting squad at the Youngstown Area Reserve Station in Vienna will respond to some calls, but is limited as to when it can respond.
“If they have (military) planes in the air, they can’t leave the base,” Masirovits said.
The air base is “absolutely instrumental” in helping, but “They can’t be used as the Band-aid for the situation,” he said.
Masirovits said he does not know how long it will take for Vienna to get back to what had been normal, because fire officials did not know how deep in debt the department is.
“There’s a lot of unanswered questions,” he said. “They don’t have the answers, the fire chief and his staff.”
If Brookfield responds to a medical call in Vienna, it sends a bill to the patient and/or the patient’s insurance company for its service, Masirovits said.
