The Prince George’s County fire chief froze a plan on June 24 to cut the number of shifts staffed by paid paramedics working at the College Park Volunteer Fire Department while officials resolve a union grievance they received in May.
Chief Thelmetria Michaelides announced on June 5 that Medic 812 in College Park, which has staffed an advanced life support (ALS) ambulance around the clock, seven days a week, would no longer be available on weekdays after 3 p.m. or on weekends, starting June 28.
“It leaves a giant gulf in the middle of Route 1,” said former College Park City Councilmember John Rigg, who volunteers as a paramedic and administrator with an ambulance service in Calvert County. He noted that the College Park-based unit is “the only [paid] paramedic unit from the D.C. line to Beltsville.”
Several area fire departments have volunteer paramedics, including those in Berwyn Heights, Branchville (College Park) and Hyattsville. But Grant Walker, president of IAFF Local 1619 of the Prince George’s County Professional Firefighters and Paramedics Association, said volunteer shifts are rarely reliably staffed 24/7.
“It’s not the same” as having paid staff on the clock all day and night, Walker said.
Walker said the closest paid paramedics to College Park are at the Greenbelt Volunteer Fire Department & Rescue Squad.
“The impact is that advanced life support resources will have to come from farther away in a system that’s already strained,” Walker said. “We don’t want to see any of our resources reduced. We want to see them bolstered.”
Walker added: “It’s simple: Common sense pervades that a unit directly across from the entrance to the University of Maryland is more likely to run the call on the university better than one that’s in Chillum or one that’s down the road in Beltsville or anywhere else, quite frankly.”
This isn’t the first time county officials have reduced paid positions at area fire stations.
Under former Chief Tiffany Green, the county removed 24 career firefighters and emergency medical personnel from Greenbelt and six from Berwyn Heights in July 2024.
At that time, the cities of College Park, Greenbelt and Berwyn Heights filed a request for a temporary injunction against the plan, saying it would endanger “countless lives … as response times to fire and medical emergencies will be lengthened.”
The Prince George’s County Circuit Court denied the request.
Michaelides’ about-face on reducing Medic 812’s three daily ALS shifts, staffed by two paramedics each, into a single, two-person shift came after Rigg asked the city council to send a letter to the fire chief objecting to the change.
College Park Mayor Fazlul Kabir noted in his blog, Kabir Cares, that “the reduction in local paramedic coverage could lead to longer response times for critically ill or injured patients and place additional strain on emergency response resources throughout the region.”
He added, “Access to rapid advanced life support is a critical component of public safety and community health.”
One former volunteer fire official had a stronger reaction.
“In a career of astonishment,” the official, who asked not to be named, said, “this one’s nearly at the top of the list. It is utterly senseless to take that resource and literally put it completely out of service two-thirds of every day.”
Paramedics respond to 911 calls and provide emergency medical care to patients as they are transported to the hospital. Unlike firefighters and emergency medical technicians, paramedics may administer medicine, insert breathing tubes, shock a heart back into rhythm and perform other life-saving procedures.
In a memo to “all sworn and volunteer personnel,” Michaelides said no changes to the schedules of paramedics assigned to Medic 812 will be made until the union’s grievance “has been formally heard and fully adjudicated.”
A preliminary hearing was held on June 26.
In the grievance, the union asks the county to uphold a four-year-old contract that requires county-staffed fire departments to have six personnel on the floor at all times. Each shift, the contract stipulates, should include four firefighters, one supervisor and two emergency medical service employees, including EMTs or paramedics, according to Walker.
College Park is one of three fire stations in the county that do not comply with the contract, Walker said. “Before [Michaelides] had even decided to change those hours … we were advocating that College Park be staffed the same way as others.”