October 21, 2004

San Jose Fire Chief Jeff Clet faces tough budget year
Department struggles to fill 53 vacancies

Editor’s Note: The following is the 13th article in an ongoing series about the city’s departments and appointed officials. Next week: San Jose Independent Police Auditor Teresa Guerrero Daley.

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

San Jose’s new fire chief Jeffrey L. Clet is carrying on the heroic family tradition of fighting the fire beast by stepping into his father’s old job this past March.

And his son is now continuing that admirable practice by joining, out of his own accord, the California Department of Forestry (CDF) where he’s working to protect the state’s wild lands from the flames.

San Jose Fire Chief Jeffrey L. Clet followed in his father’s footsteps by stepping into his old job last March. Photo by Sheila Sanchez

Clet, 45, however, became a firefighter not out of convention or custom but because he wanted to protect and serve the community that he loves, particularly when it’s facing an emergency or when heat and flames combine to create an inferno.

He presides over a 720-firefighter department that’s often been praised for its selfless dedication to its mission:
“To serve the community by protecting life, property and the environment through prevention and response.”

“We’re an incredible organization. We’re an extremely dedicated group of people working hard every day on behalf of the community. I couldn’t be prouder to be their leader,” Clet said during an interview from his office in the old Martin Luther King Library building in downtown San Jose.

Clet served 21 years with the department—from 1981 to 2002—before leaving for two years to become Gilroy’s fire chief. His father, Vince Clet, served as San Jose’s fire chief for six years before he retired in 1984 after serving for more than 26 years as a firefighter. And the youngest Clet, 21-year-old Steven, joined the CDF last year.

In March, the San Jose City Council and Mayor Ron Gonzales offered him the $175,000-a-year post. He replaced Dale Foster who had served as interim fire chief after former fire chief Manuel Alarcon retired in January of 2003.

And what was the senior Clet’s response to his son’s new vocational inclination? “Do what you need to do.”

“He never really guided me toward the fire department. He really wanted it to be my independent choice,” he said.

Clet said he never got the full breath of how much his career meant to his father until that memorable day at City Hall when city officials appointed him the city’s next fire chief. His father became emotional as he pinned his old badge on his son. “I know he’s proud,” Clet said.

And he’s now getting a small taste of that kind of fatherly pride watching his son, Steven, fight the fire beast for the CDF.

The chief’s career began soon after Proposition 13 left few firefighting job opportunities in the Bay Area.

Clet tested for 26 different fire departments in the state to become a firefighter. He was initially hired in Merced County in 1979 where he worked for two years.

In 1980 he went to work as a firefighter for the city of Milpitas.

In May of 1981 he finally became a San Jose firefighter, being selected out of a four-year-old list kept active but which could not be used because of budget restrictions.

“I really didn’t have a full understanding of what firefighters did,” he said of his first years in the dangerous profession. “I knew that’s what my dad did. I visited him at the fire house and probably the single thing I knew was that he loved what he did.”

After he graduated from Santa Teresa High School in 1977, he received an associate of arts degree in fire science from San Jose City College. He said he became even more interested in becoming a firefighter after serving as a volunteer with the Santa Clara City Fire Department.

“When I first got to help somebody I knew that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” he said.

The chief is now busy relocating from Gilroy, where he’s lived for 15 years, to San Jose where he finally purchased a condominium in the Silver Creek area.

The San Jose Fire Department
The department encompasses several departments: the bureau of field operations, which oversees firefighters in the field; the bureau of administrative services, which does hiring and administers the department’s $110 million operating budget and Measure O’s $159 million approved by voters in March to renovate old fire stations and build new ones; the bureau of support services, which builds fire stations and oversees the emergency dispatchers; and the bureau of fire prevention, which oversees fire inspectors.

Firefighters in the field represent the majority of the department’s workforce—720 out of 832 employees. They work in the city’s 31 fire stations. Four new fire stations will be constructed during the next seven years.

“We’re a very lean department today on a per capita basis. We’re one of the leanest big city departments in the nation,” he said.

Clet said the department’s name is a misnomer because it provides the community with a much-broader array of services than just fire fighting. It also works hard to educate the community about healthy living because 80 percent of its work is responding to people during medical emergencies.

The department also handles hazardous materials calls and search and rescue calls helping people when they’re locked in a structure or freeing infants locked in cars during hot days.

“We kind of consider ourselves the ghost busters. If you don’t know whom to call we’re the agency that normally responds and takes care of the situation,” he said.

As a result of 9/11, Clet said the department’s role has also expanded to be able to respond to terrorist threats and attacks.

The department was the first agency in the county to obtain weapons of mass destruction kits that allow firefighters to treat themselves as responders and a small portion of the population, if attacked.

He said his most memorable fire fighting incident came as a probationary captain when his engine company responded to the Almaden Winery fire in the early 1990s.

When the devastating Santana Row ravaged the under construction upscale shopping and housing complex on Aug. 19, 2002, Clet wasn’t with the department but he said he learned lessons from what happened by reviewing the information that came out of that fire.

“My responsibility is with the entire city and the community at large. I know that although there may be some singular incident that’s extremely large, my role would be—rather than run out and be at the incident—to get myself in the Emergency Operations Center and make sure that the entire community is protected.”

Challenges
Clet joined the department during tough economic times.

The city, facing a projected $85 million deficit, could consider asking firefighters to agree to a wage-freeze during their upcoming labor contract negotiations as well as slashing $850,000 from the department’s budget.

Clet also needs to build stronger alliances with neighborhoods, to avoid conflicts such as the one after the Santana Row fire. The department’s slow response angered many Moorpark Avenue apartment residents whose dwellings caught on fire from the burning embers that wafted over their neighborhood from the Santana Row fire.

Call volume continues to increase as the recession lingers and the uninsured rely on the fire department for their medical needs. “We feel stretched really thin,” Clet said, about the department’s broadening responsibilities. “We’re being asked to do more with the existing staff.”

The department is also facing the possibility of a 50 percent reduction in its hazardous materials unit, from four to two people. The reduction is being negotiated between the city and the International Association of Firefighters, Local 230.

“It gives us great concern because we think it’s the critical front line of defense for the firefighters and the community in the event of terrorist attack or a chemical release,” he said.

The department also has 53 vacancies, 24 of them could possibly be filled when candidates in the recruit academy graduate in December.

For now, however, the department is paying overtime to fill those openings as it’s required to have a minimum of 193 firefighters on duty at all times.

At the same time, the department is bracing itself for the month of January—its highest retirement month. Clet expects to lose several firefighters to retirement or attrition.

He said the department will need a series of recruit academies to become fully staffed, but running the academies is expensive.

The department, which usually runs two recruit academies a year, was only authorized to run one this year. Clet said he’s going to ask for funding for a second recruit academy next summer. “It’s a big challenge,” he said.

The chief is also trying to find ways to care for his burdened firefighting workforce. Many firefighters work beyond their normal shifts to fill those vacancies, some laboring more than the required 24-hour shift every other day, and working two back-to-back 24-hour-day shifts or more. “We allow them to volunteer and on a regular basis hold them over and call them back regardless of whether they’re volunteering to work,” he said.

Another challenge facing the department is how to continue to work with the city’s heavily criticized new 911 emergency dispatch computer system, which cost the city $4.7 million. The system features global mapping technology that allows the department to track the whereabouts of every firefighter in the city. However, since it was installed in June, it’s suffered many technological errors making dispatchers’ jobs more difficult.

For more information on the San Jose Fire Department, 170 W. San Carlos St., San Jose, Calif., 95113, log onto www.sjfd.org or call (408) 277-4444.