District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department
In June 2015, Jullette M. Saussy was named the medical director of DC Fire and EMS. On January 29, 2016, she announced her resignation from that position in a letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser. In her letter, she called the department's culture "highly toxic to the delivery of any semblance of quality pre-hospital medical care."
History of the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department
But at the end of May 2002, DCFEMS was in deep turmoil. The "Washington Times" called it a "crisis in management that has left the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department with crumbling stations, aging vehicles, faulty radios, inadequate training and flagging morale among its 1,900-plus members". There was tension between firefighters and emergency medical services personnel (who had worse pay and benefits); turnover among low-paid paramedics left fire companies understaffed; low pay made it difficult to recruit new paramedics; the "dead zones" in the new radio system were still not fixed after two years; the city installed four radio antenna towers for its radio system instead of the 19 towers required; some firefighters were using vehicles that were supposed to have been scrapped four years ago; there were so few reserve vehicles that on some days there was no reserve; fire stations plumbing and roofs leaked, and electrical systems were outdated and in poor repair; and firefighter vacancy rates had not improved in two years, creating $2 million in overtime costs. The entire communications system failed for 10 and a half hours after three of the radio dispatch system's four towers suffered rain and lightning damage during a storm. Unqualified cadets were being allowed to graduate from an affirmative action firefighter training academy, and as many as two-thirds of the cadets in the program lacked emotional maturity, had discipline problems (one actually shot another), failed to show up for class, or failed required portions of the course. Training for veteran firefighters was so inadequate that the best-trained firefighters in D.C. were ones who got training by working part-time for all-volunteer fire departments near the District of Columbia.