Anchorage firefighters and dispatchers say rising workloads are driving burnout, injuries and retention challenges

By Bella Biondini
Anchorage Daily News

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The phone calls range from reports of plane and car crashes to building collapses and cardiac arrests. Often the calls come in rapid succession, one after another.

Anchorage Fire Department dispatcher Frances Robinson doesn’t always have time to process what she hears.

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“You might answer to someone screaming, and you can feel it in your body. Your heart rate, everything goes up, and then you don’t have a release,” said Robinson, 46. “You have to sit there, and as soon as you’re off that call, take the next.”

Over the past decade, the number of 911 calls answered by the Anchorage Fire Department has more than doubled, resulting in a 60% increase in responses. The number of calls crested to 50,000 for the first time in 2025, according to Anchorage Firefighters Union President Justin Mack. He expects the fire department to break another record by the end of this year.

The Municipality of Anchorage employs about 350 firefighters. Despite steadily rising call volumes, that number has not changed, nor has the number of fire engines and ambulances responding to emergencies.

Without additional staff to spread out the growing workload, Anchorage firefighters have said they are straining to avoid burnout and excessive wear and tear on their bodies. Firefighters at the city’s busiest stations take calls through the night and sleep through chunks of their days off. Back-to-back calls result in missed meals, workouts and team training, and limited time to recover.

Fire Chief Doug Schrage in an interview acknowledged his team suffers from “some morale problems” and burnout. He said fire department leadership has worked to “right size” its responses by relocating ambulances to spread out call volume among stations.

The municipality also invested in new specialized teams that respond to behavioral health emergencies and repeat 911 callers and were created to take pressure off first responders, Schrage said. While eight newly hired clinicians helped staff the Mobile Crisis Team after its launch, its operations are supplemented by firefighters on overtime.

Anchorage firefighters work a rotating schedule of three 24-hour shifts, with a day off in between each shift. The long work hours, which equate to a 56-hour workweek if no overtime is picked up, can spill over into days off duty.

Robinson’s 12-hour shift, starting at 8 a.m., could stretch until 2 a.m. if a co-worker calls out and no one picks up the overtime. The extra hours can disrupt the next several days, she said. At home, she uses a color-coded calendar to balance parenting two children with her husband, who is also a firefighter.

The nature of the job, intensified by the increase in call volume, has taken a toll on her mental health, eating habits and sleep over the 20 years she’s spent as a dispatcher.

“I have a 12-hour sitting job. You go home, and you’re like, ‘Why am I exhausted?’ And it’s because (of) these highs,” she said.

‘A very tight budget’

There’s been an ongoing conversation among city leaders about how to increase the number of Anchorage firefighters.

As part of a budget amendment made this spring, the Anchorage Assembly requested an analysis of the Anchorage Fire Department’s projected call volumes and current staffing model.

The commissioned study will build on data collected in 2023 that revealed the city’s reliance on voluntary overtime shifts has become “increasingly unsustainable” due to employees’ desire to maintain work-life balance and the growing awareness of the chronic physical and mental health impacts of firefighting.

In 2025, the municipality spent more than $6.5 million on overtime within the fire department. Anchorage officials in the past have tried different ways to reduce these costs, such as closing specific units during night shifts when call volumes are lower.

According to the 2023 staffing study, the municipality needs as many as 57 new full-time firefighters to reduce its reliance on overtime.

“We still have some questions about overtime utilization, and there’s been changes to call acuity,” Assembly member Erin Baldwin Day said during an April 28 meeting. “We’re in a position now where I think we’re all recognizing that we need some creative solutions and professional feedback as to how we might structure the fire department going forward.”

While Schrage said he “feels strongly” the fire department should grow in size, he doesn’t expect that to happen in the near future. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance has emphasized the municipality is facing a fiscal cliff that may soon necessitate additional cuts to public services if no changes are made to the city’s existing funding structure.

“There’s a very tight budget season coming up. If there’s a path to finding the funding by whatever mechanism, I’ll work aggressively to pursue it,” Schrage said.

“The city has many, many, many priorities and we are just part of it,” he said.

Muscle and bone

Captain Jeff McDonald, 54, only had time for a handful of warm-up squats, part of his Thursday morning physical therapy routine, before a code yellow alert signaled a medical emergency. He hurried into his gear, and within minutes, the fire truck pulled out from the Station 15 bay in the Bayshore-Klatt neighborhood.

After seven months out of work, McDonald returned to the front line in May. He was attacked on the job in 2025, and his hamstring tendons tore from his hip. It’s only one of the injuries he’s sustained during the 25 years he’s worked for the department.

He first tweaked his lower back moving a patient in 2004. Before he returned to the station that day, his crew received four more calls in a row. After trying to navigate to a structure fire around midnight, McDonald, in too much pain to continue, told his driver to pull over and go out of service.

He eventually had three tiers of his lower spine reconstructed.

“When you don’t get a chance to fuel your body and rest your body, you’re setting yourself up for those sorts of events,” he said.

The Anchorage Fire Department relies on three-person frontline response units, fewer than the four-person standard set by the National Fire Protection Association . Flat staffing reduces the division of labor even more, McDonald said.

McDonald equated the call volume at the Mountain View station, where he spent a large portion of this career, to getting his “teeth kicked in.” It means fewer people to split the resuscitation or lifting of patients, carrying of heavy gear or mitigating risk when a building is on fire. Firefighters often have no time to warm up or debrief before they get back into the truck, he said.

“Eventually something significant is going to break, whether it’s a muscle or a bone or somebody’s spirit or well-being,” McDonald said. “I think that’s what we’re seeing now.”

‘Nothing left to give’

On certain shifts, firefighter Matt Carlson, 29, doesn’t make his bed at Station 4 because he expects not to use it, he said.

Firefighters at the Midtown Station have responded to almost one call per hour on their busiest days. It’s not uncommon for them to run out of ambulances and barely have time to resupply before heading back into the field, Carlson said.

It’s a grueling pace that’s increased even in the five years he’s worked at the station. On his days off, as soon as Carlson stops moving, he falls asleep, and his body shuts down by 6:30 p.m. He picks and chooses which outings he can afford to cancel.

“The social part is very difficult because there’s like, nothing left. I have nothing left to give to myself or the people around me,” Carlson said.

The municipality is running two firefighter academies this year. Mack described it as a “positive step” to address the attrition the department is experiencing. But it doesn’t result in more people responding to calls, he said.

Mack said he’s hopeful long-term planning can eventually help reduce work hours and mitigate the increased service demands. The problem, Mack said, has been a “failure to launch” and lay out where the department should land in 10 years.

A lack of action has had real consequences, he said. According to an International Association of Fire Fighters survey issued to members last year, more than 70 firefighters were considering or actively applying elsewhere — including Carlson. That’s 20% of the approximately 350 firefighters on staff.

“It’s really hard for us to adapt to this increase in call volume and workload to the point where people break,” Carlson said. “They leave the station, they leave the department, they leave the state.”

Montgomery Fire/Rescue Lt. Demetrius Gilmore was playing pickleball when he helped perform CPR and use an AED on a man in cardiac arrest

June 19, 2026 02:00 PM

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