Firefighters Union Censures Chief for Failing to Protect Firefighters

The International Association of Firefighters has voted unanimously to censure the chief of the Central Arizona Fire and Medical Authority.

PRESCOTT VALLEY, Ariz. — The International Association of Firefighters has voted unanimously to censure the chief of the Central Arizona Fire and Medical Authority. The firefighter’s union voted on the censure at their conference in Boston this week.

According to the censure, the IAFF is accusing Chief Scott Freitag of failing to protect his firefighters from cancer, not meeting the minimum staffing levels the union has set, and bullying and harassing union members. Among other things, the censure accuses Freitag of not doing enough to protect his employees from cancer. Don Jongewaard, president of the Professional Firefighters of Arizona, said some CAFMA fire stations expose firefighters to cancer-causing materials.

“Benzene is getting into the living quarters, the areas that we have to stay to be able to go on calls,” he said. “It’s got the ice machine and with in with all the other apparatus, so it’s getting soaked with benzene.”

The union also accused Freitag of threatening union members with loss of their jobs or promotions for voicing their complaints at union meetings. And the censure said Freitag is not keeping his staffing at the national standard of four firefighters per truck. Jongewaard said CAFMA is currently at three firefighters per truck.

“He’s made the decision and has made the community less safe, plain and simple,” Jongewaard said. “He’s forced firefighters to run emergency call short staffed.”

Freitag denied all the allegations, but acknowledged his department’s staffing level is below the national standard. However, he said it’s all his department can afford. “If you’re going to try to hold a rural fire district in Arizona to a standard of a minimum four-person staffing on every engine every single day, financially, there’s no way for us to achieve that,” Freitag said.

He also admitted there is a hostile work environment complaint filed against the department, but said it’s the only one of his tenure as chief. He said that investigation should wrap up shortly. And Freitag said there’s work to be done on making fire stations safer, but said he’s renovated some buildings and installed more safety equipment, filters, exhaust systems and bought new equipment to try and address the cancer risk.

“I don’t think that you can truthfully point at anything within this organization and say that we’ve done nothing but everything that we can,” Freitag said. Freitag said he’s not sure what the censure means going forward, but he believes he has the support of the community.

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