Political Scene: Meet the unsung workers who keep the state running on Christmas Day

NORTH KINGSTOWN — The fish at the Lafayette Trout Hatchery don't know it's Christmas.

And if the young fry get hungry, they'll start to eat each other.

So at 7:30 a.m., Kenneth "KC" Fernstrom, a senior biologist with the Department of Environmental Management, will report to work.

For the next four hours, he'll clean tanks and remove debris from the chilly outdoor raceways while pausing every 30 to 45 minutes to hand-feed 80,000 tiny hatchlings. When he's convinced that their bellies are full, he'll head home to his family – but not before he's turned out the lights so that the juvenile fish can't see each other in the dark.

Fernstrom is one of the government employees who keep things running smoothly on Christmas while just about everyone else enjoys a day off. The list includes not only police officers, state troopers and firefighters, but also DEM employees, about 140 Rhode Island Public Transit Authority bus drivers, and a state medical examiner and crime scene investigator.

For some nurses at Eleanor Slater Hospital, staff members at the Rhode Island Training School and guards at the Adult Correctional Institutions, the holiday will be just another workday. Child Protective Services investigators will also punch in like usual, and other members of the Department of Children, Youth and Families will oversee court-ordered visits.

Even more state workers will have the day off but be on call, including Department of Transportation crews who plow and salt the roads if a snowstorm hits, and staffers who take reports about foodborne illnesses and wild animal bites for the Department of Health. If the Health Department needs to do emergency testing of a substance that could be a bioweapon, such as anthrax, one person from the biothreats lab will be on call to oversee those tests.

"I don't mind working," said Stephanie Johnson, a Providence firefighter who plans to work a 24-hour shift so that her colleagues with children can stay home. "For me, it’s just a day. I'd much rather people have the full Christmas experience with their families."

From owls to oil spills, DEM's dispatcher takes the call on Christmas Day

If a hunter hoping to bring home some venison falls out of a tree stand in a remote state management area, or a homeowner looks out their window and spots a black bear, Karisa Janvrin will be the one who gets the call on Christmas Day.

Janvrin works as a dispatcher for the DEM's Division of Law Enforcement, which deals with everything from sunken ships to chemical spills to loose livestock. It's her first year on the job, so instead of having a leisurely breakfast and opening presents with her daughters, Kierra, 12, and Jade, 13, she'll be manning the phones alone from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.

But that goes with the territory, she said: The environmental police are a 24/7 operation.

The DEM's law enforcement division doesn't just field calls about potential hazards or violations of environmental law, such as oil spills, illegal dumping or overturned trucks. They also get thousands of calls a year about roadkill, injured wildlife and animals that wind up in precarious situations — whether it's an owl tangled up in fishing line, or a raccoon perched on a light pole over the highway.

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Recently, Janvrin dealt with a bobcat that appeared to be stuck in a tree but was actually just waiting to pounce on a squirrel. Calls often come in from people who’ve spotted wild animals such as coyotes or skunks and want to know what to do, but unless the creature is rabid, the answer is usually to do nothing. (It’s illegal, not to mention dangerous, to feed or move wild animals.)

"Some of them don’t understand that it’s a normal part of our world," Janvrin said.

In the summer, calls about drownings and boat accidents are all too common. This time of year, it's more typical to get questions about hunting regulations and complaints about poaching. On Christmas, the DEM's dispatcher also handles calls that come in for the state fire marshal's office, so Janvrin expects to spend the holiday dealing with that, too.

Janvrin recently graduated from Bridgewater State University with a bachelor's degree in environmental sustainability, and she hopes one day to join the DEM's environmental police. When the dispatcher job opened up, she said, she saw a way to get a foot in the door.

Since she doesn't have seniority and usually works on Sundays and Mondays, she'll be working Christmas Eve, too. She's hosting family for dinner that night and plans to cook everything the day before, then hurry home after work to heat everything up.

A new family tradition: Prime rib at the fire station

Johnson, the Providence firefighter, will show up at the station at 7 a.m. on Christmas and stay until 7 a.m. next day. During the 10 years or so that she's spent on the squad, she's always volunteered to work on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

"I don't have any children, and it allows somebody with kids to be home with them," she explained. "We do our own thing in the station anyway."

Among those traditions: Every single year, her father provides dinner for the firefighters on duty. Some years, he cooks for everyone; other years, he'll order catering, or show up with prime rib that they can cook at the station.

"He enjoys doing it and says it’s sort a tradition for him now, too," Johnson said.

Christmas tends to be a fairly quiet day for firefighters. On any holiday, there's a likelihood that you'll need to put out a cooking fire, but those are usually fairly small, Johnson said. It's also common to field EMS calls from people who don't necessarily have an emergency to report but are lonely and having a hard time.

The Providence Fire Department will have 88 people working on Christmas, including 16 at the main headquarters at the public safety complex on Washington Street, where Johnson works.

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Since they already live together at the station when they're on duty, being there for Christmas feels a bit like being with extended family.

"We just kind of hang out, try to relax ... nothing different than what other families would do," Johnson said. While she does have relatives of her own with whom she could be spending the day, "usually we catch up after the holidays, after they’ve slowed down, and pick a different day to celebrate and get together."

'Fish don't have holidays or vacations'

Four months from now, thousands of anglers will head to local lakes and ponds for the opening day of trout season. To make that possible, Fernstrom, the DEM hatchery manager, needs to work on Christmas Day.

Rhode Island's native brook trout population is too small to sustain recreational fishing, so the state has stocked local waters with hatchery-grown fish since 1871. Currently, Fernstrom and his colleagues are raising rainbow trout, brown trout, brook trout and golden trout, as well as salmon that won't be ready until 2026.

"I always say when asked about the holidays that fish don’t have holidays or vacations, and we are a 24-hour, 365-day operation," Fernstrom said. On Christmas Day, his colleague Jeromy Jamgochian will man the Carolina hatchery, while Zack Morse oversees the Perryville hatchery.

Between them, they're responsible for about 230,000 fish, plus 130,000 fry. It takes about 18 months, on average, for a rainbow trout to grow large enough to be released.

Raising fish in hatcheries is a tricky science that requires getting the water chemistry and flow just right. To make sure the fish stay healthy, staff need to keep a close eye on them — for instance, are they eating aggressively enough, and are leaves and debris impeding the water flow in the raceways?

"On holidays we meet the basic needs of our fish," Fernstrom said. Most will get a fishmeal-extruded pellet for their Christmas dinner, as they do for every other meal.

Fernstrom has worked in the DEM's Fish and Wildlife Division for 25 years, which means that he's worked holiday shifts at the hatcheries for practically his entire adult life. One year, a snowstorm knocked out the power on Christmas, which really "put a wrench in everything."

When his children were younger, his coworkers would step in so that he could stay home and play Santa, he said. Now, his teenager daughters want to sleep until noon, so it's his turn.

"We're a tight group," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Christmas is a regular workday for these RI public employees