By Leslie Parrilla
The Press Enterprise
CORONA, Calif. — Corona is looking to neighboring fire agencies for support during emergencies to make it easier and faster for emergency workers to reach scenes in bordering areas.
This month, Corona updated its agreement for fire services with the neighboring Chino Valley Independent Fire Protection District in San Bernardino County.
It also is reaching out to the city of Anaheim, its neighbor to the southwest in Orange County, to exchange fire services during emergencies closer to them.
“What we’ve been doing the last couple of years is looking at our agreements and seeing how we can make them more robust,” Corona Fire Department Chief John Medina said.
Creating agreements with individual fire agencies allows departments such as Corona to ask them directly for assistance during emergencies, rather than taking the time to go through a statewide mutual aid process.
“For the general public, it gets the closest available resource to the emergency,” Medina said. “We want to share resources.”
Corona is somewhat unique in that Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties merge at the western tip of the city at Green River Golf Course clubhouse, which is in San Bernardino County.
For Corona firefighters, battling traffic on Highway 91 during peak congestion hours to reach a collision that could be reached faster from Chino Valley proves difficult.
“There’s no way for us to cover southbound quicker than they can,” Medina said.
Corona has agreements with the city of Riverside, Orange County, Chino Valley and the U.S. Forest Service to cover the Cleveland National Forest.
Agreements are being drafted with Riverside County for the city of Norco, after that city recently dissolved its fire department to contract with the county, and the city of Anaheim.
Norco has agreed to cover the Corydon area of Corona while Corona, in exchange, covers the Norco Hills area.
Creating an automatic mutual aid agreement with Anaheim also would allow Corona and Anaheim to share resources, which often end up costing each agency little additional money because most services are reimbursable, Medina said.
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