WHEREAS, The Committee on Labor and Civil Service is responsible for proper oversight over all operating departments to ensure the health and safety of all City employees. It is committed to ensuring the adequacy of employee safety policies and procedures, including those of the Philadelphia Fire Department in light of the fatal five-alarm fire its firefighters successfully extinguished at a vacant warehouse in Kensington on April 9, 2012; and
WHEREAS, There is an ongoing federal occupational safety evaluation of the PFD. Additionally, the City of Philadelphia asked the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA) in October 2010 to fund an independent, comprehensive study of PFD's operations, including organizational structure, funding, staffing and deployment, labor management relations, and management systems of its fire and medical services; and
WHEREAS, The report, published in January 2012, highlighted several challenges facing the PFD and made recommendations to improve service delivery
and
increase organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Some of the recommendations are purely in the purview of management, while others fall under the purview of labor-management negotiations. This Committee seeks to review the safety procedures in place during the PFD's recent fatal incident, and could extend a similar review to other operating departments, with the goals of reducing and preventing the injury and death of City employees and reducing the City's exposure to civil litigation; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That the Committee on Labor and Civil Service is hereby authorized to hold public hearings reviewing past and ongoing external evaluations of the Philadelphia Fire Department's management, operations, structure, system performance and service, with a particular focus on determining if adequate safety controls were in place during the warehouse fire of April 9, 2012.
End