Hub firefighters to get fitness gear

Program seeks to cut disability rates

Boston officials are installing treadmills, weights, and other fitness equipment at every fire station and are encouraging annual physicals in a bid to improve the conditioning of the city's firefighters, who have been retiring with disability pensions at high rates.

The program, which is voluntary, will bring Boston in line with other cities nationwide that offer comprehensive fitness benefits to firefighters. But the city will remain behind some, such as New York, which requires mandatory physicals each year, and Los Angeles, which requires annual fitness training, checkups, and agility tests.

In Boston, only 32 percent of the roughly 1,550 Boston firefighters currently get annual checkups, and there is no ongoing fitness requirement, according to city officials. On an average day, between 150 and 200 firefighters of the force are out sick or injured.

And the number of firefighters retiring because of accidental disability has soared in recent years to 74 percent of all retirements. That's more than twice the rate of other similarly sized cities. In Baltimore, for example, the disability retirement rate is 22 percent; Milwaukee, 15 percent; and Raleigh, N.C., 20 percent.

While federal authorities are investigating whether some firefighter disability claims in Boston are bogus, city officials said they want to address the underlying health issues for those that aren't.

Boston Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser Jr. outlined the new fitness initiative, expected to cost about $300,000, in a letter sent yesterday to firefighters.

"The city is offering this wellness initiative because we understand the health risks you face and appreciate that you face them to protect all of us," Fraser wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Globe. "We are asking for nothing in return . . . other than your participation."

The city also has persuaded its primary insurer, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, to provide free screenings for high blood pressure and cholesterol at each of the 35 fire stations. Firefighters also will get additional insurance coverage for lab tests and exams to detect cancer and heart disease.

The Boston firefighters union, which did not respond to a request for comment yesterday, has been calling for an improved health program for more than a year. It has sought financial incentives up to $5,000 per year for each firefighter who gets an annual physical and works out regularly. Union leaders also asked for additional annual stipends for firefighters educated as personal trainers who help their colleagues stay fit.

The program announced yesterday doesn't include financial incentives.

Establishing a comprehensive fitness program also was a major recommendations of an outside panel that reviewed department management after two firefighters died in a restaurant fire in August 2007. Autopsy results indicated that one of the men who perished was too drunk to legally drive, and the other had traces of cocaine in his system.

The head of the outside review panel, National Fire Protection Association president James Shannon, commended the city's fitness plan yesterday.

"This is really a great step forward in dealing with a central issue in the fire department," Shannon said. "It's something that the union indicated they were strongly supportive of, too."

The panel's other major recommendation - that the city institute mandatory random drug and alcohol testing - is still in contract negotiations with the firefighters union. The city has asked for testing but the union has refused without receiving in return a significant increase in pay or benefits.

Those contract negotiations are scheduled for a hearing Oct. 6 before a state labor panel, which could decide to send the case to binding arbitration. The firefighters have been working without a contract since July 2006.

The new fitness equipment will arrive at fire houses in the next 30 days, and within the next year, each station will have at least one treadmill, an elliptical-type trainer, bench press, adjustable incline press, dumbbells, free weights, and a Nautilus-type machine.

According to Dr. Michael G. Hamrock, the Fire Department physician who helped design the new program, chronic exposure to heat and toxins makes firefighters more susceptible to coronary heart disease and cancer than other city residents.

The on-site screenings for blood pressure and cholesterol will begin Sept. 22, and added insurance coverage for cancer and heart disease detection tests will begin immediately. Most of those screenings are no different from those recommended for the general population - Pap smears, mammograms, colonoscopy exams, for example - but for firefighters they will be covered 10 years sooner. For example, preventative colonoscopies are generally approved for men beginning at age 50, but for Boston firefighters, they will be given beginning at age 40.

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.