This story was originally published by The Oaklandside.
The fire department for the East Bay Regional Park District, the largest regional park district in the United States, operates from 7 a.m. to around 5 p.m. — unlike most fire departments, which are staffed 24/7. This means that any calls that come in after hours are reviewed by a dispatcher, and then, should the situation warrant, firefighters are pinged to see if anyone can respond. No one is required to respond after regular business hours, though, which leaves the immediate responsibility of handling the call to neighboring fire departments.
Firefighters from the East Bay Regional Park District say this arrangement has made it impossible for them to respond quickly and effectively when a call comes in after hours. Depending on the type of incident, its severity, its proximity to urban environments, and its distance from a fire station, firefighters in general are expected to be at the scene in anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes from time of dispatch. Right now, the after-hours response time for the EBRPD fire department is a minimum of 40 minutes, said William Hough, president of AFSCME Local 2428, which represents the park district’s employees, and an EBRPD firefighter.
Even if firefighters are able to respond after hours, many can’t reach their designated station — let alone the area in which the emergency is taking place — in an efficient manner. Due to the vastness of the park district — it spans 126,000 acres — and the Bay Area’s high cost of living, most firefighters don’t live close to their main station. This results in an even longer response time, depending on who can take the call.
“If there is an immediate need,” Hough said, “we can’t respond immediately.”
In 2023, Hough and his fellow firefighters submitted an official proposal to test out an alternative to what they felt was an outdated staffing model. Their idea would keep the department open 24 hours a day. Since this initial proposal, they’ve continued to press their case to the park district, saying their pilot program would allow them better response time and recruitment, and possibly a more efficient use of funds, but they’ve yet to meaningfully sway park leaders to their cause. With fire season upon us and the memory of the Los Angeles firestorms still fresh, they worry that their current staffing structure is putting the safety of the community at risk.
Since the fall of 2024, the East Bay Regional Park District has been conducting an assessment of the fire department through an outside consulting firm. In response to The Oaklandside’s questions about the proposal and fire department staffing, a spokesperson for the park district, Kendra Strey, wrote: “The purpose of the assessment is to develop and implement strategies that will enhance the Fire Department’s ability to address both current and future hazards. As this process is still underway, we are unable to comment further at this time.”
‘Fires don’t typically get smaller with more time’
If an after-hours call comes into 911 and a dispatcher decides it’s an appropriate call for the East Bay Regional Park District’s fire department, the firefighters receive a “tone out” to their phones or radios; they can respond if, as their 2023 proposal put it, they feel a “sense of duty,” but they aren’t under any formal obligation to do so. The park district’s 73 parks span two counties. Firefighters are required to live in the Bay Area, but their main station is in Tilden Regional Park, in Berkeley.
Some firefighters, like Hough and Brendan Randall, live relatively close. Others, like Charles Heinbockel, live further out. Regardless of how long it takes for an individual firefighter to reach the station they cannot respond to a call alone. Once a firefighter has decided they are able to take the call, drive to the station safely and efficiently, and change into their gear, they still need to wait for more personnel to arrive. Hough, Randall, and Heinbockel each recalled situations when they had to wait at a station — sometimes for a significant amount of time — for other firefighters to arrive, delaying their response time even further.
“In urban environments, there is a guarantee that a fire engine can be at your house in about five minutes or so,” said Randall. “And we don’t provide that guarantee. And that just seems crazy that we haven’t adapted to subscribe to that.”
Unless a call comes from directly next to the fire department, Randall emphasized, a five-minute response time would be unlikely, regardless of staffing. He said depending on the type of call, the location, and the level of need, the firefighters would aim to arrive on scene anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes.
These late-night calls can take a toll, firefighters say. They disrupt personal lives and mental states. For firefighters like Heinbockel who are parents of young kids, jumping out the door on short notice is even more difficult.
“You’re having to totally shift gears and make sure that everything at home is taken care of, versus when you’re at work, you’re at work,” he said. “It’s really challenging for family, home life, because you’re kind of just bolting out of there. It’s not unheard of — a large majority of firefighters throughout the nation are volunteers, and that’s how they operate — but we’re considering ourselves a professional fire department. I think we should be staffed differently.”
The after-hours calls are demanding in other ways. Many describe a feeling of guilt or anxiety when they are unable to field a call. Heinbockel said it’s as if he were not only letting the public down but also “letting my crew down.”
As wildland firefighters, the park district has special equipment as well as some specially trained firefighters who are uniquely equipped to respond to certain calls that come from the park. This includes a wildland fire engine that has better off-road capabilities and a water tender that lets them transport large quantities of water in areas that do not have fire hydrants. When no one from the park district’s fire department is able to respond to a park call, the job falls to neighboring fire departments. It’s a bad look for the agency, Heinbockel said, because he knows “that other departments would be like, ‘Well, this is regional parks property. Why aren’t they here?’ ”
If guilt is the prevailing feeling for Heinbockel. For Randall, it’s frustration.
“Say the call is a fire. Fires don’t typically get smaller with more time,” said Randall. “Fires are growing until people get there. It’s frustrating because it feels so obvious, and there hasn’t been a change.”
Response from leadership
A couple years ago, the park district’s firefighters realized their department’s 10-hour-shift staffing model was outdated. The department started in 1963 and since its inception has relied on a system of on-call firefighters to support their fire department. These on-call firefighters hold other positions in the park district, like naturalists and rangers, but they also receive fire training, allowing them to respond to fire calls.
In 2016, the park district had about 45 on-call firefighters to support their staff. The following year, the park district welcomed its last class of new on-call firefighters from the academy, according to AFSCME Local 2428 leadership. The numbers of on-call firefighters dwindled, and as of today, the park district has around 11 on-call firefighters. While their number has shrunk, the park district has continued to grow. In 1963, there were six parks; in 2025, there are 73. On top of this, climate change has ramped up the scale and frequency of wildfires across the country.
Park firefighters felt these factors impacted their work, so in 2023 they drafted a proposal in which they laid out their rough plan for a six-month pilot program during fire season to staff the fire department 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They asked for a 48-96 staffing model, which would allow firefighters to work consecutive 24-hour shifts, followed by four days off. In the proposal, they walk through what the pilot could look like, its potential financial impact, its benefits, and the current roadblocks they see as impeding their ability to respond effectively.
“The Fire Department is required under mutual aid agreements to send a response to incidents within the Park District,” firefighters state in their 2023 proposal. “The current 10-hour workday with after hour call backs has not successfully provided for prompt and effective response to fire, medical, and environmental emergencies. The current delay in EBRPDFD response to incidents has led to loss of Park District property, damage to our natural and recreational resources, and allows more time for patient’s conditions to deteriorate.”
When firefighters drafted their proposal in 2023, they estimated that it would be a financial benefit to the park department. When firefighters are toned out after their normal hours, they are paid at higher overtime rates. They also cited the potential costs in property and assets should a significant fire break out after hours. The firefighters are quick to add that their analysis could be fine-tuned.
“It is not standard for firefighters to have to write policy or to write proposals,” said Hough, speaking as the union president, “and definitely not standard for [union members] to come up with the financial metrics of what something’s going to cost.”
In their proposal, the firefighters also suggest that a new staffing model could help them with firefighter recruitment and retention as it would allow the park to employ firefighters who live outside the Bay Area. They argue the area’s high cost of living limits their applicant pool, as well as their ability to respond effectively with their current model.
“This leads to longer commute lengths which increases response times to all calls after hours,” they wrote. “Dedicated and passionate Firefighters are faced with the decision to remain at East Bay Regional Parks Fire Department with less pay, higher living expenses, and a less desirable schedule or pursue employment with other departments.”
At the time, the firefighters submitted their proposal “up the chain of command” and waited. For years they say their request went unacknowledged. At the beginning of this year — two years after the firefighters made their initial proposal — the Los Angeles fires shocked California communities and showed the devastation that increasingly severe fire seasons and incidents are having on places across the West.
Hough knows the devastation firsthand. He lost his housing and belongings to the North Complex Fire in 2020 when he was out fighting the August Complex fire. In January 2025, now the union president, went in front of the board of directors for the park district to try and get the firefighters’ request heard. The park district has acknowledged their request, he said, and they’ve met with leaders in other capacities, but the union has received limited feedback on their proposal, having been told to wait until the consultant’s report to be done. The firefighters’ response to all this is simple: The fire season doesn’t wait for consultants.
When asked about the union’s request, Sabrina Landreth, general manager for the park district, said that she has seen the fire department’s proposal and that there is no strict process for proposing something like this within the park district. She said she’s happy to have the union come forward and for the park district to assess their request. Landreth said that the question of 24/7 staffing is being evaluated as part of the district’s assessment of the fire department through an outside consulting firm.
The president of the board, John Mercurio, told The Oaklandside in an email that he needs to see a formal proposal from the union with more supporting data. He said he wanted the union to give him “a rational, evidence-based reason to make the change.”
Hough allowed that Mercurio’s request was reasonable and asked that any data collection be done in collaboration with leadership. He also emphasized that they are “just firefighters” asking for help to make their work and the community they serve safer.
“We are proposing to do a better job of keeping the two counties that we live in and work in safe,” he said. “And we are proposing to try it out for just the fire season, because we have seen how other fire seasons have gone.”
