For
years, I have researched and collected data on Fire Departments, particularly
in the City of
My
career in public safety covered three decades and I served my last two years as
police chief for the City of
After
I retired, I began to meet with working and retired fire chiefs and
rank-and-file firefighters over a five-year period. I will refer to them as the
career firefighter study group. After reviewing the actual data on firefighter’s
activity, they began to come up with several new methods or models of
delivering fire services to the public that would be more efficient and save
lives and control costs. These models are fairly simple and easy to understand
and were developed from actual data supplied by fire departments under the public
records act.
Fire
Departments, and their culture of family, began to form in the nineteenth
century and the vast majority of its benefactors, from the newest recruit to
the chief, work consciously and unconsciously to protect the status quo. Real analysis
of data leading to change coming from inside the organization is almost
impossible. David Fleming, former president of the Los Angeles City Fire
Commission, in addressing problems in the Los Angeles Fire Department, said
recently, “The public doesn’t understand what goes on in that department.” Having spoken with Mr. Fleming personally,
his statement, in part, means that there is little, if any, transparency in
fire departments. The public has a certain perception based upon positive
community contacts at festivals, parades, ceremonies, and elementary school
visits where the children climb on the fire engine wearing their red fire hats
and junior fire badges. Fleming is as frustrated as most and would like for the
public to have real knowledge of fire departments because that is the only way
any positive change can be made.
With
entry-level
It
is understandable that many firefighters resist change. However, some of the
best practices in the fire service are being compromised under the banner of
tradition and culture. If it were not at the expense of public safety, it
probably could be tolerated. My motivation is to find ways to improve the
services firefighters provide that will benefit the public.
With
the authority of the Public Records Act, fire department operational data has
been collected over the course of many years. This information is not readily
offered to the public or city council because it may alter their perceptions of
the fire department. As a former police chief and special assistant to the city
manager in
It
will be presented in the perspective of sound management principles, void of
the myths and traditions that are ingrained in the fire service today. It will
open up valuable opportunities. The annual potential savings to
The
engine companies, usually staffed with four firefighters, are the first
responders on all medical, fire and rescue calls. Nearly 90% of their emergency
calls provide backup to the paramedic ambulances. The engine arrives, on
average, 57 seconds before the ambulance.
The
nine engine companies, on average, respond to 4.4 calls per 24-hour shift. The
four calls are for medical backup and the 0.4-call is typically a fire call --
not a fire incident as the fire department claims. Almost all fire calls are of
a minor nature and easily handled by the single engine company. The
International Association of Firefighters, which is the international
firefighters union, states that 90% of all fires can be extinguished with the
500 gallons of water on board the engine and that 93% of all fire alarm calls
are false. That leaves very few of the 1700 annual fire calls resulting in
significant events. In fact, last year, only five of the 1700 fire calls were
considered major events. Fire calls have been going down drastically over the
past three-decades as new building materials, building codes, early detection
systems and automatic sprinkler systems have become the norm. That’s the good
news, but medical emergency calls are rising faster than fire calls are
declining. Medical calls have doubled over the past twenty years and will
continue to climb in the foreseeable future while fire calls have declined by
about one thousand in that same time period.
The
average time an engine spends on a call is fifteen minutes regardless if it is
a fire or medical call. That is down from eighteen and a half minutes ten years
ago. That means that an engine company averaging 4.4 calls per shift spends
less than one hour and fifteen minutes, or about 4% of their on-duty time
responding to and completing those calls. In 1998,
A
truck company averages less than 2 calls per 24-hour shift. Some fire stations
are busier than others, but it is not uncommon for a truck company and some
engine companies to have no calls at all during a 24-hour shift. Other times,
although rare, engine companies can log up to ten or more calls per shift. But
even with that volume, at fifteen minutes per run, they are handling calls for
no more than three hours or about 12% of their shift. Most calls occur during
normal waking hours, with increased demand reflecting the burgeoning daytime
population. We don’t pay firefighters to be productive during their entire
24-hour shift, we pay them well to respond to emergency calls as fast as is
humanly possible and to handle the incidents professionally, following
established training and protocols. They are the highest paid workforce in all
of government and we should expect that they adopt the best practices to
deliver the services they provide the public.
No
informed citizen or fire official will disagree with the following premise:
that the Best Practice for emergency response occurs when the engine and truck
companies and firefighters and rescue ambulances and paramedics are in their
neighborhood fire stations, ready to respond to emergency calls. Fire stations
are generally located near the geographic center of their districts so that
they have the ability to respond in any direction with similar response times. Anything less than that has the potential of impacting performance
by adding seconds or minutes on emergency calls. Engine and truck
companies know this as “geographic integrity”. This means that the firefighters
are committed to being in their fire districts, allowing the best possible
response times to the neighborhoods they serve. They are dedicated to doing
everything reasonably possible to remain at maximum readiness, all personnel
and apparatus in district and preferably in station. All fire personnel consider
rapid response to be first and foremost in their mission of providing the
finest emergency services to the public. We will return next week and address
the first of several subjects that pertain to policies that effect response
time, efficiencies, best practices and cost savings.
Copywrite 2007
Contact
information for questions and copies of the document:
Bruce
Philpott
Phone:
(818) 240-8949
Email:
logicpoint@aol.com/