New Fire Models, Week # 2: Reduce Emergency Response Times

The subject matter for the next two weeks will address the issue of emergency medical and fire responses, the time it takes to get to the scene of those emergencies and pertinent policies and practices. The GFD’s response average on medical calls is around 4 minutes and 24 seconds, and 5 minutes and 26 seconds on fire calls. One valuable aspect of the fire culture is that firefighters view the issue of emergency response time as a principle measurement of their performance. They refer to this as a Best Practice. The Best Practice for emergency response occurs when the engine and truck companies and firefighters and rescue ambulances and paramedics are in their district fire stations, ready to respond. The nine neighborhood 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 the performance by adding seconds or minutes on emergency calls. This practice is known as geographic integrity and is one of the hallmarks for rapid response.

At a recent Budget Study Session, you heard from former Fire Chief Gray, Deputy Fire Chief Howard and fire union president Captain Stavros that seconds count on fire, rescue and medical responses. Emergency response times have been a recurring discussion point over the issue of speed bumps. On that subject, former Fire Chief Gray has said repeatedly that speed bumps cause emergency vehicles critical delays where precious seconds count for a person who is having a life-threatening medical emergency. No one will argue that on any given call, the life of a person could rest upon the time it takes for the first responders to arrive. Thanks to former Chief Gray, several engine companies are now staffed with one paramedic. That is a good beginning.

However, there is a disconnect in the bedrock principle that rapid response time will not be compromised at the expense of risking public safety. A current policy in the fire department allows for delays of up to four additional minutes on emergency calls. That is a significant increase in response times.

This specific policy is found in Chapter 4 of the Glendale Fire Department Policy and Procedure Manual. It allows for first responder firefighters to jog or run in remote parks or around a two-block neighborhood adjacent to their district fire stations. A top-level fire official recently called this “the 90-second (delay) policy”. This policy is flawed and has two methods of causing potential life-threatening and unnecessary delays. The first allows engine companies to drive to assigned locations sometimes at the farthest end of their districts and in two cases beyond their fire district boundaries. Firefighters park their engines and trucks and run up to a quarter of a mile away from the apparatus. In fact, one engine drives to a county operated park at the extreme end of its elongated district, in violation of this very policy, because its assigned location for jogging is at a centrally located high school. Those who train hard become exhausted and would not be in suitable physical shape to perform optimally on a call. They all wear running shorts and shoes and carry portable radios. When a call comes in the firefighters have to jog back to the parked engine or truck and change into their appropriate uniforms, one kind for a medical call and another for a fire call, before they can begin their response. After 40 years of walking through Brand Park, I can attest to this activity. Besides the district engine company, Engine 27, I have observed engine and truck companies and the rescue ambulance from Fire Station 26, jogging or walking in groups of eight. (Photos upon request)

The policy requires that they complete their one-hour jogging sessions before 9:30 AM, which, unfortunately for the public, is a fairly high emergency call volume time of day. In researching this, I found there are four-minute delays on medical emergency calls or about twice the length of an average response time. I randomly selected four emergency calls with Engine 27 responding from Brand Park. I discovered that two of them logged six-minute response times, one took seven minutes and one at eight minutes, all significantly above the average. In Fire District 27, many of the calls are injury traffic collisions on or near the freeway and on highly traveled commercial streets like San Fernando Road and Glen Oaks. These high volume call areas are located on the opposite end of Brand Park where the jogging takes place. Had the firefighters on Engine 27 been in their district fire station when they began these responses, they would have been within their average response times. About 90% of Engine 27 calls are for medical emergencies, commonly heart attacks, strokes and injury traffic collisions, the kind of emergencies where the outcome can rest on just a few precious seconds.

On page 32 of Civic Technologies Final Report on medical emergency responses, it states under Section 3.6.3, regarding excessive delays, “There is a relatively high number of failed incidents around Station 27”. This is due, in part, to a direct result of firefighters running in this remote park when emergency calls come in. There are numerous other examples of “failed incidents” that are directly related to this policy in other fire districts as well.

The second part of this policy permits firefighters to jog as far away as two blocks from their assigned district fire stations. They carry radios so they can be alerted to a call and run back as quickly as possible to the fire station. This policy has a built-in delay factor that cannot be justified in light of the options.

This policy does, in fact, add minutes to emergency calls. With nine engine and three truck companies each taking up to an hour running in parks or jogging around a two-block radius of the fire station, it amounts to up to twelve hours of each shift where the risk of adding several minutes to emergency calls exists.

Fortunately, there are options that accomplish both objectives: keeping emergency personnel and equipment at maximum readiness for emergency response and keeping the firefighters physically fit. All nine fire stations have fitness rooms that contain all of the necessary equipment to keep firefighters in fine physical condition, offering both aerobic and weight-resistance training equipment. There is no need to leave the fire station grounds to get a good workout.

The current policy that permits emergency response delays of up to four minutes by allowing remote off-site and out-of-district locations to jog is simply unacceptable. Fire department management and union officials have acknowledged that every second counts on the outcome of medical emergency, fire and rescue calls. This can mean the difference between life and death. Next week we will address another policy that evolved out of operational practices that create many more unnecessary delays on emergency responses.

ã 2007

Contact information for questions and copies of the document: Bruce Philpott

Phone: (818) 240-8949

Email: logicpoint@aol.com/