Drivers of Montgomery County firetrucks and ambulances continue to be involved in what officials regard as an alarming number of accidents, causing insurance rates to skyrocket and forcing new policies designed to slow response times to some calls.
In a stern department-wide e-mail last month, prompted by four accidents in a 26-hour period over the Fourth of July weekend, Thomas W. Carr Jr., chief of the county's career firefighters, said the drivers' performance was placing the public and fire and rescue personnel at risk.
"I am sitting in my office on July 4 thankful that I am not in the throes of planning a firefighter funeral or assisting a civilian family with their grief," he wrote. "We must break the chain and we have to do it immediately and that may take radical action. I am prepared to take action."
He added: "I am afraid we continue on the path to catastrophe."
No details about the recent accidents were available yesterday, but Carr's e-mail indicated that there were no injuries.
In May 2003, The Washington Post reported that Montgomery firetrucks and ambulances had been involved in 1,100 accidents in the previous five years, doing so much damage to the fleet that the department risked losing its insurance coverage.
Departmental reviews of the most serious accidents, including crashes that left one motorist dead and more than a dozen injured, found that many could have been avoided had drivers slowed before entering intersections or followed other established safety procedures.
During the first nine months of fiscal 2004, there were 117 collisions, resulting in 182 claims. Final numbers for fiscal 2004, which ended July 1, are not expected for several weeks.
The county's insurance carrier, Volunteer Firemen's Insurance Services Inc., is still covering the department, but last month it raised the annual premium 17 percent, from about $1.38 million to $1.62 million.
Fire officials said they have made numerous attempts in recent years to reduce accidents by improving training methods and encouraging a defensive driving philosophy. But they concede that the trend has not reversed.
"We haven't been able to reduce the number of collisions or claims," said Gordon Aoyagi, the county's fire administrator. "Their behavior is modified for a certain period of time and then what happens over time -- the adrenaline and excitement of responding to calls begins to take over."
There is no established national standard for driving safety in fire departments.
In a memo, Aoyagi said the county was warned by its insurance carrier that Montgomery's losses since 1997, totaling nearly $2 million, "exceed trends from comparably-sized fire service clients on both the East and West coast."
Steven Edwards, director of the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute at the University of Maryland, said Montgomery is part of a national trend of increased accidents involving rescue vehicles. Last year, he said, 33 percent of firefighter fatalities were caused by vehicle accidents, the highest percentage since 1977.
