ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — An audit found Orange County Fire Rescue lost track of thousands of gallons of fuel, leaving the door wide open for theft.
Gasoline is a hot commodity and one that an Orange County employee was caught helping himself to a little more than a year ago.
The employee was spotted filling up his county car and then filling up a personal portable container 40 times.
That prompted the Orange County Comptroller's Office to undertake its first comprehensive fuel audit in more than a decade, starting with Fire Rescue.
The audit found 4,300 gallons of diesel and about 300 gallons of unleaded were missing in a three-month period.
“It wasn’t a large percentage of the fuel, but when you look at 4,300 gallons of fuel, that’s a lot to me,” said Deputy Director of the Office of County Comptroller Chris Dawkins.
It’s enough gasoline to fill up 287 cars with 16-gallon tanks at a cost of about $14,000.
While the problems were seen across the board, Fire Station 54 by SeaWorld had the most fuel unaccounted for, with 927 gallons over three months.
That’s about 10 gallons a day disappearing.
At best, it was sloppy record keeping, at worst, it could have been stolen.
“We know in this case that no one was checking to make sure people were doing their job and recording the fuel usage,” Dawkins said. “They have the resources to do it.”
No one person will be disciplines for the lapse.
A spokesperson with Orange County Fire Rescue said the department agrees with the audit findings and they plan to use automated controls eventually.
A separate audit of county fuel is underway.
WFTV
