By Maggie Ybarra
The El Paso Times
EL PASO, Texas — While the number of fires in El Paso has not changed much in the past four years, the number of fire-related deaths and the need for emergency funds to help victims has skyrocketed.
It’s a situation El Paso Fire Department Battalion Chief Sam Pena cannot explain.
Eleven people died in fires in 2010, and 17 received burn injuries, department officials said.
Homes and other structures that went up in flames in the past 90 days have left many without shelter and in need of Red Cross emergency funds.
Red Cross Executive Director Mark Matthys said the 71 families displaced by the fires in the past three months required about $105,000 in emergency funds and pushed the Red Cross of El Paso into a budget deficit.
Figures from the agency show that its expenses for helping victims of fires grew from $21,756 in 2004 to $237,150 in 2010.
People who died in fires in 2010 — except for those killed in vehicle fires — perished because they did not have fire detectors or were not able to escape. 2010 was the deadliest year for fire deaths since 1916.
These deaths prompted Fire Chief Otto Drozd to unveil three initiatives combat the situation.
Beginning this month, firefighters will educate people on fire safety at neighborhood association meetings and conduct free home-safety surveys throughout the city. They already install free smoke detectors in homes not equipped with the devices, Pena said.
This month the city also will get a new call system, named Priority Dispatch. The system was bought by the El Paso County 911 District at a cost of about $500,000. It will help dispatchers send the appropriate amount of firefighters and others to fires and other emergency calls by breaking down calls into five priority levels.
Now, all calls are given the same priority even though 80 percent of the calls are medical and only 1 percent involve fires, fire officials said. Starting this month, dispatchers will prompt callers to answer a series of questions before dispatching a firetruck or an ambulance, officials said.
That means fewer firetrucks and firefighters will be unnecessarily dispatched to emergency calls.
Will the changes make the difference the department desires?
Pena said they will.
“The reason we believe that it will is because the majority of lives saved are going to be saved by educational programs and not necessarily by the response of the fire department,” he said.
He said that fire prevention in general involves being proactive and preventing potentially hazardous conditions.
“Through effective and ongoing fire prevention programs it’s possible to reduce the number of fires that occur. Fewer fires translate into fewer lives lost and less injury and property loss to our community,” Pena said.
Reducing the number of vehicles dispatched for medical calls and fire calls will also be beneficial, he said. That means more units will be available in case they are needed for a high-priority situation, Pena said.
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