“We Live With It”: Firefighters Confront Council Over Staffing, Share Frustration After Walking Out

By Logan Andrew
FreeWire

Thursday night’s Health and Safety Committee meeting was supposed to be about numbers. Instead, it became a reckoning.

When Lieutenant Jeremy Gilliam of IAFF Local 1120 stepped to the podium, the room fell quiet. Then heavy. This wasn’t just a negotiation or a political ploy—it was a man, and a department, near the edge.

“You cut our staffing, those calls don’t get handled—and we know it,” Gilliam said, his voice shaking as he recalled a recent fatal fire, during which the department was simultaneously responding to five EMS calls. “PTSD is real,” he continued. “We take that home. The families take it home. You get voted out—we live with it.”He wasn’t even planning to speak that night.

Gilliam noted at the start of his remarks that he hadn’t intended to come to the podium—he was simply there to listen. But after Councilmembers Vicki Dishon and Kevin Myers asked questions directly to the firefighters in attendance, he felt compelled to respond.

He wasn’t alone.

Moments later, Lieutenant Eric McNutt stood at the same podium and pointed across the room.

“That guy right there—he put out a woman who lit herself on fire,” McNutt said. You could hear the emotion in his voice. “She didn’t make it.”

He corrected a local media report that claimed the city hadn’t had a fatal fire since 2010. “That’s false,” he said. He listed several: the woman who self-immolated in 2016, the man who died after smoking with an oxygen tank in 2020.

Then McNutt described a weekend in hell: a train derailment, a structure fire, and an airplane crash that killed an entire family. He wasn’t using euphemisms.

“The next day, I was picking up body pieces,” he said. “Not parts. Pieces.”

The council chamber was silent.

These weren’t statistics. These were memories—scars etched into the people who are called to save us, again and again, whether we’re ready to fund them or not.

The System That's Breaking Them

Gilliam explained that the department is still operating under a memorandum of understanding signed February 14, 2024, which sets the daily minimum staffing at six. A second agreement had briefly allowed Chief Schwemley to count toward staffing, but after an injury, the trial ended. They’re back to six.

Six firefighters—for the entire city, plus EMS services in Lykens, Dallas, and Holmes.

Gilliam reminded council that six of their current members are in DROP—eligible for retirement at any moment. If even one walks out, the department is stretched. If several leave? He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

Outside, after Gilliam and his fellow firefighters stood up and walked out of the meeting, I followed them.

They were tense. Angry. Worn down. But more than anything, they were tired of coming up here, time and time again, to say the same thing—time and time again.

They asked a question quietly among themselves—where is our chief during all of this?

Chief Schwemley Responds

I reached out to Chief Schwemley following the meeting. He told me he wasn’t absent out of indifference but rather due to ongoing union negotiations. He felt attending the meeting and speaking publicly could reflect poorly on the department during a sensitive period.

He confirmed that Gilliam and McNutt only spoke because Councilmembers Dishon and Myers addressed them directly. Otherwise, they had planned to simply observe.

On the larger issue of staffing, Schwemley said that to significantly cut overtime, he would need to hire three full-time personnel. But even then, the overall cost doesn’t go down—it just moves.

“You hear complaints about the budget, the overtime,” Schwemley said. “But what you don’t hear are complaints about the job we do.”

He noted that when the city previously relied more heavily on private EMS services, there was high turnover and instability. Now?

“I have almost no turnover.”

Schwemley also pointed out that because his firefighters work 53-hour weeks, their benefits cost the city less than those of a typical 40-hour employee. And Bucyrus isn’t alone in this struggle—surrounding counties are experiencing similar issues, he said, with many departments facing tough decisions around personnel and overtime.

"We're Not Overpaid. We're Understaffed."

A few days after the meeting, I spoke to Gilliam again by phone. His voice was steadier, but the urgency was still there. He told me that the reason some firefighters appear to make over $100,000 a year has nothing to do with inflated pay.

“We’re not overpaid. We’re understaffed.”

He pushed back on the idea—floated by some on council—that part-time firefighters could be the answer. One council member, speaking off the record due to ongoing negotiations, said part-timers from other towns would cost less—no benefits, and no overtime unless they cross 53 hours, a little-known clause in the department’s contract.

But Gilliam said the math doesn’t hold up.

“You can hire six part-timers to cover the overtime hours, but each of them still needs $8,000 worth of equipment,” he said. “That adds up quick.”

Beyond the dollars and cents, it’s about trust and commitment.

“You want a guy who lives here. Whose family is here. A guy who’s going to go above and beyond—not someone just picking up shifts to make a little extra.”

He also explained how revenue the department brings in—from EMS runs and contracts with outside townships—doesn’t go directly back to the fire department. It’s pooled, and a large share ends up funding the police department instead.

“It’s like you and your neighbor share a bank account,” Gilliam said, “and your neighbor stops paying the mortgage—so now you’re the one getting punished.”

Council Responds—But The Pain Remains

Inside the meeting room, Councilmember Kevin Myers didn’t shy away from the emotion in the room.

“I’ll be the first to say—six isn’t enough. I’ve said before, I think you guys should have eight,” Myers said. “But we’re in a hell of a pickle.”

He emphasized that repealing the MOU language around staffing wasn’t a deliberate attempt to cut their hours—it was a move meant to create flexibility as the city navigates its budget crisis.

“You can’t schedule an emergency,” Myers said. “You never know whether you’ll need more people at 2 a.m. or 2 p.m. That’s the dilemma.”

Myers referenced the same weekend McNutt did—the train derailment, the plane crash, the structure fire.

“That night couldn’t have gotten any worse. And you guys were there. Picking up the pieces—literally.”

He ended with a quiet recognition of what council can’t measure or fund with a line item.

“I’m not discounting a damn thing Jeremy said to me,” Myers said. “I take that very much to heart.”

The Truth That Lingers

What lingered long after the meeting wasn’t a vote, a budget proposal, or a policy change. It was the silence that followed McNutt’s voice as he pointed across the room at his fellow firefighter. It was Gilliam, standing at the podium, telling city leaders that they may get to sleep at night—but the firefighters don’t.

This isn’t just a staffing issue. It’s a trauma issue. A trust issue. A leadership issue.

And it’s still unresolved.