Troubling allegations of hazing and even racist abuse at the San Francisco Fire Academy have emerged as the city is shelling out $100,000 a day in overtime to account for a significant shortage of firefighters, NBC Bay Area has learned.
Currently, some 54 firefighter recruits are undergoing training at the Division of Training to join the ranks of 1,500 firefighters in the city – 250 firefighters short of the department’s authorized strength. The city is paying $100,000 a day – accounting for $25,000 per firefighter per year – to meet voter approved staffing levels at the city’s firehouses, based on the latest available data from the San Francisco city Controller’s Office.
The dropout rate of the academy, meanwhile, has been running about 10 percent to 20 percent per class since 2010, according to figures provided by the department and taken from the Fire Commission’s website. That rate translates into fewer firefighters to fill the widening gap in staffing. So far this year, more firefighters have been ordered to work overtime than all of 2014, fire department statistics show. As of June, the department ordered 1,447 overtime shifts as compared to 1,313 last year. If the current trend is reflected for the entire year, the city would have ordered nearly 3,000 overtime shifts – the most ever.