Only two weeks after the Seward City Council added a full-time position to the Seward Fire Department, they added another during their meeting on Nov. 25.
Adding two positions was always the ask, per Fire Chief Clinton Crites at a Nov. 12 meeting where the first position was added. The council unanimously approved a resolution adding the position to their budget for the fiscal years 2025 and 2026 — and asked Seward City Manager Kat Sorensen to bring forward a second resolution to meet the full request.
Crites told the council then that he needed the two additional paid full-time positions to keep the fire station staffed day and night. That would bring the department’s staff of paid firefighters to three.
The council unanimously adopted that second resolution — the second action taken by the council that evening that drew applause.
At both meetings, Crites cited city council minutes from Aug. 15, 1960, where Seward’s fire department had asked for more staffing. Those minutes describe the imminent retirement of a fire chief and a proposed plan for “affecting fire protection” by staffing the department with a chief, a “day man” and two “sleepers.”
“August of 1960 they were talking about needing paid personnel,” Crites said. “We’ve been kicking this can quite a few yards down the road.”
As it stands, Crites said Seward Fire Department is “struggling” to find coverage for all hours of the day. His department is called out to fires, slips, search and rescue — “we’ve unclogged toilets before.”
Council member Kevin Finch asked Crites how Seward’s staffing — and requested staffing — measures up to similar-sized communities. Crites pointed to a recent effort by Kasilof residents to see their local Central Emergency Services station brought up to full-time staffing by six paid firefighters.
Sorensen said that, with a “reallocation of funds,” she’s “confident that we would have that funding for the position, and confident in the growth of our city that we would be able to support three full-time firefighters.”
Morgan Woodard, a Seward firefighter, said that with current staffing there’s work being left undone because there aren’t the people to do it. That’s equipment maintenance and volunteer training that isn’t possible.
When the station isn’t staffed, Woodard is one of the firefighters who are on call. He lives outside city limits.
“I go as fast as I can — safely — to get in here,” he said. “On a CPR call, minutes is lives.”
Jesse Pike, a volunteer firefighter, called for a “paradigm shift” in the way Seward approaches its emergency services.
“In years past, it’s been a robust cadre of volunteers supplemented by a couple of professionals,” he said. “That needs to do a 180. We need to have a robust, professional department supplemented with a handful of dedicated, long-term volunteers. I think that’s what the community expects.”
An agenda statement by Crites, attached to the first resolution, says that the department’s call volume has increased over the past five years from an average of around 300 calls to 500 calls per year, “the new norm and only increasing.” The department’s workload, he writes, will only continue to grow as large projects like the new cruise ship facility get underway and increase Seward’s population.
Full recordings of Seward City Council meetings can be found at “City of Seward” on YouTube. The text of the resolution and other legislation can be found at cityofseward.us.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
