Walking into a duplex on fire in Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood on Nov. 19, firefighter Haithem Hammad quickly realized that the floor below him was about to collapse and ammunition stored on the floor above him was starting to explode.

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       Heavy rescue equipment for the Northern Virginia city is kept less than a mile a way. But there wasn’t anyone there to bring it, he said. Instead, help came from neighboring Fairfax County.

       “We got really lucky,” Hammad said. Had they or the residents been trapped, “we would have been waiting hoping and praying that Fairfax was there.”

       A few days later and a few miles away, detectives had to be pulled off their cases to guard a perimeter when police said a man shot at officers from inside his home, said Lt. Marcus Downey, vice president of the Alexandria police union. He said the team negotiating with the man, who ultimately surrendered peacefully after 24 hours, got less than six hours off between shifts.

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       “It’s not enough,” Downey said. “You don’t want to make split-second decisions on a few hours’ sleep.”

       Union leaders in both departments said staffing shortages strained their response in those incidents, a problem they say starts with salaries that lag behind those in other jurisdictions in the Washington region. Along with sheriff’s deputies, they are asking for 10 percent pay increases across the board.

       City officials said they are trying to raise pay and fill open slots. But they pushed back on the dire assessment painted by the unions, saying the public safety agencies have a built-in buffer of staffing and that other pressing government needs must also be funded.

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       “We have pay competitiveness issues with police and fire, and we have to address them,” Mayor Justin Wilson (D) said. “I don’t think anybody’s trying to hide from the numbers. We know what those numbers show.”

       While the unions have been particularly outspoken in Alexandria, the tensions mirror those across the region and the country after protests against law enforcement and nearly two years of the pandemic. Some departments are offering huge bonuses for recruits.

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       “It is a challenging time to hold on to a workforce,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a national association of police chiefs and other local agency leaders. The D.C. area in particular “is an extremely competitive market,” he said.

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       Alexandria has tried to keep salaries in the middle of the regional pack. Critics say that leaves the city behind other departments that aim for the top. Neighboring Arlington and Fairfax are also talking about pay increases, although both already have higher starting salaries than Alexandria. All are now facing the prospect of collective bargaining for the first time in decades.

       “We seem to get caught off guard” by pay raises in neighboring jurisdictions, Alexandria City Council member John T. Chapman said at a recent legislative meeting. “We are kind of at the bottom at this point.”

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       In Alexandria, unions say the city is short 66 firefighters out of 281 authorized, 32 of 324 police officers and 30 of 169 sheriff’s deputies. City officials note the unions are counting unfilled “overhire” positions outside what the city considers full staffing. And the firefighters and sheriff’s deputy unions count those out on leave, or unavailable to respond to emergencies for medical or other reasons.

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       City officials and union leaders also dispute which other departments in the region are worth using for comparison. The police union ranks the force 19th out of 20th in pay in Northern Virginia.

       Fire Chief Corey Smedley concurred that his department “has been experiencing staffing challenges that often result in mandatory overtime and cross-staffing resources in order to meet daily staffing needs” and said he has been working with the city and union on solutions. There are 27 would-be firefighters in training now, and a class of 30 planned for next year.

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       And former Alexandria police chief David Baker backed up the police union’s push for more competitive salaries in a recent letter to the editor in the Alexandria Times, saying the difficulty in recruiting and keeping officers “destabilizes basic levels of effectiveness and efficiency” in the department.

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       The Alexandria police and fire unions say hiring more people won’t help without better pay to keep them. In the police department, by their count, 33 sworn staff have left just this year. While crime is down overall slightly from last year, serious crimes went up significantly during the pandemic. Fire union spokesman Jeremy McClayton said even though more people have been hired in the fire department than any other part of city government in recent years, it hasn’t kept up with attrition that has some firefighters averaging 77-hour weeks and units regularly out of commission.

       Mark B. Jinks, the outgoing city manager, said sharing resources across borders “serves the community extraordinarily well. … If your house is burning down, you don’t care what jurisdiction the truck comes from.” Rare occurrences like large fires and long barricades cannot drive all staffing decisions, he argued. “There has to be some degree of efficiency built into the system.”

       The unions counter that the shortages ripple out across the region. In a joint statement, Alexandria and Arlington fire unions said the response to a Dec. 4 blaze in Crystal City was strained because the south Arlington rescue team was helping on a call in Alexandria.

       On an hourly basis, Alexandria firefighters and medics can make 30 or 40 percent less than they would elsewhere in the region. (Annual pay is more competitive, but at 56 hours, firefighters in Alexandria work a longer week than most.) Police are making about 5 to 9 percent less than in neighboring jurisdictions.

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       Downey, of the police union, said the 10 percent increase sought by the union “sounds high, but that’s because we’re so far behind.”

       Sheriff’s deputies also lag in pay; union Vice President Toyia Brown said that contributes to staffing issues that mean courthouse deputies have to work weekends at the jail and jail staff are regularly asked to stay on for overtime after 12-hour shifts.

       “As fast as we’re getting people in, they find better pay in other places and they leave,” she said.

       Wilson said he and other city officials must consider a long list of priorities in budgeting, and pay and staffing issues are complex ones that can only be solved over time.

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       While Alexandria typically increased pay slightly each year, annual raises were shelved in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, when the city froze pay for all its employees.

       “You can talk to anyone in any industry right now who hires people, whether they’re at Burger King or well into six figures: It is a struggle to hire and retain,” Wilson said. “It’s the worst job market that I’ve seen from an employer perspective.”