As Wall Street Chases Profits, Fire Departments Have Paid the Price
The New York Times
Fire engine manufacturing is now largely controlled by three companies. Around the country, prices have soared, and orders can take years to fulfill.
Desperate to gain control of flames that were raging through Pacific Palisades last month, the Los Angeles Fire Department issued an urgent call for any available personnel to report for possible deployment.
But there was a problem: Dozens of the rigs that would have carried extra crews that day were out of service. The city maintenance yard was filled with aging fire engines and ladder trucks, many of which were beyond their expected service life.
Chuong Ho, a firefighter and union leader who was among those who reported for work on Jan. 7, said many of the firefighters who were available to help that day could not be sent to the front lines.
“We didn’t have a spot for them,” Mr. Ho said.
That breakdown, records show, was in part a result of the city’s failure to hire enough mechanics to keep the rigs in service. But there was also a deeper problem: For years, the fire truck industry had been ratcheting up prices on new rigs and failing to meet delivery dates of those that were ordered. Some departments have waited years for replacement vehicles while hunting the internet for parts to keep their older rigs going.
Those problems have compounded in recent years as Wall Street executives led an aggressive consolidation of the industry in a plan to boost profits from fire engine sales. One company, backed by a private equity firm, cut its own manufacturing lines as part of a streamlining strategy and then saw a backlog of fire engine orders soar into billions of dollars.
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