Cochella Valley’s responses are featured in this article written by The Desert Sun. They did a great job of conveying the importance of properly placed fire stations and the need for sufficient numbers:
Staffing, funding shortages blamed for slow arrivals of half of valley’s stations.
Twelve of the Coachella Valley’s 23 fire stations fail to arrive at emergencies such as fires and heart attacks within five minutes – the nationally recommended response time.
Cathedral City Station 411 registers the longest emergency response time in the valley at 6.7 minutes while Palm Desert Station 33 boasts the fastest average at four minutes.
As the clock ticks during an emergency, fires spread and people have less of a chance of surviving heart attacks, experts say.
For every minute a heart attack victim does not receive CPR, the chances of survival decrease 10 percent, said Michael Osur, Riverside County’s deputy director for the Department of Public Health.
The National Fire Protection Association, a fire prevention advocate and public safety source in Massachusetts, says its five-minute recommendation starts the moment a fire station receives an emergency call and ends when the first qualified fire engine arrives at the scene.
“We always want to respond as soon as possible,” said Daniel Berlant, spokesman for Cal Fire, which operates most of the valley’s fire stations. “But there are going to be situations where the response time is going to be longer.
“(Times) vary, and (they’re) all regulated at a local level. It’s not something we regulate on a state level.”
Fire officials blame slow response times on everything from a lack of funding and manpower to station locations and gated communities.
Budget, staffing woes
In Cathedral City, the lack of resources is uncomfortably apparent to officials and residents alike.
The three fire stations in Cathedral City all respond in more than six minutes.
“This is not a surprise because it’s an issue that we’ve been discussing for several years,” said Cathedral City City Manager Don Bradley.
With 42 firefighters, the department operates with fewer than half the nationally recommended firefighters and paramedics, Fire Chief Bill Soqui said.
The department sometimes arrives on scene with two firefighters on the engine, who then have to wait for backup to fulfill federal regulations.
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration’s Two In/Two Out Rule requires at least two firefighters to back up two other firefighters before they enter.
Cathedral City resident Art Gregoire, 56, said the manpower shortage “scares the hell out of me” and his city’s failure to meet the national standard is “unacceptable” no matter what the circumstances.
Gregoire said a plan needs to be put into effect to reach that five-minute standard.
“No one expects a fire truck to come up to their house and only have two people on board,” Gregoire said. “It alarms me to hear (Cathedral City’s times are) six minutes.”
But Cathedral City cannot hire more staff without more money, Soqui said.
“We definitely need more manpower,” said Cathedral City Councilman Chuck Vasquez.
“Whenever you have to look at cutting costs, public safety is the largest chunk on the budget. It makes it very hard to replace it.
“We work hard with the tribes and grants, but this is the reality of where we are until we get resources in there from the sales tax dollars,” Vasquez said.
Cathedral City has failed on three ballot measures to raise money since November 1999, Bradley said.
The most recent attempt to hike taxes was in 2006.
“We need to increase revenues. That is the bottom line,” Mayor Kathy DeRosa said. “There are no general fund dollars where we can be adding public safety. All the dollars we spend is on running the city.”
The Fire Department is poised to receive some Homeland Security funding to upgrade its technological systems in the near future and has applied for 2009 federal funds to improve its dispatch system.
While that might help response time by a few seconds, it doesn’t address staffing issues.
“If the residents want roads fixed, we fix roads,” Councilman Greg Pettis said.
“They want parks, we build a soccer park. If the priorities of the community (include better public safety), then we have to make choices. We do our best to put the money in where they want the priorities.”
Palm Desert’s benefits
Palm Desert Station 33 responds in four minutes on average – faster than any other fire station in the Coachella Valley.
Firefighters at the station on Town Center Way – covering the Westfield mall, College of the Desert and McCallum Theatre areas – attribute their success to the coverage area, constant training and ample equipment.
Capt. Michael Martinez said Station 33 can use resources from all six stations in its battalion – stations 33, 67 and 71 in Palm Desert, Station 55 in Indian Wells and stations 50 and 69 in Rancho Mirage.
Palm Desert “is roughly 24 square miles,” Martinez said. “Since we have six (in our battalion), all our stations overlap each other.”
Firefighter Dustin Dees said daily training also helps Station 33 achieve its exceptional response time.
“There are times we’re up until 2:30 in the morning training here to prepare us to be ready,” Dees said. “It makes me feel good that our training pays off for something.”
Palm Desert spends about $9 million on its three stations – about $1.7 million more than Cathedral City does with the same amount of stations and roughly the same sized area.
“It’s a unique area we happen to be in,” Martinez said. “We just have the opportunity to get (to emergencies) quicker.”
By RaNeeka J. Claxton
Source: mydesertsun.com
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