The Concord Monitor (New Hampshire)
CONCORD, N.H. Some days on Concord’s Engine 1 are quiet. On Thursday, the crew spent part of the morning training with rescue boats on the Merrimack River. They returned to the station and ate lunch.
The first call came just before 2 p.m. when an elderly woman on oxygen pressed her medic alert button. A leaf of her table had collapsed and jammed the woman and her wheelchair underneath it.
After freeing her, the firefighters returned to the station to be measured for new uniforms. Later, they were scheduled to cover the Penacook station when those firefighters went out of service.
Yet not every day is like Thursday. Because it is centrally located, Engine 1 is typically the first backup unit called when another engine is out or in need of assistance. For example, in October a single family home on Broad Cove Drive went up in flames. The first engine that showed up did not have a long enough hose to cover the 1,400 feet from the hydrant at theof the road to the burning building. Engine 1 filled the gap.
“Some days are very quiet,” said Lt. Ian Holm, who was riding Engine 1 this week. “Other days, every company is on multiple calls all over the city.”
The budget proposed by City Manager Tom Aspell would take Engine 1 out of service, saving $659,000 by eliminating five vacant firefighter/paramedic positions and decreasing overtime. The proposal raises questions of balancing cost versus risk and determining how significantly service levels would be affected.
“We’ll be trying to cover the same call load with fewer resources, so we expect an increase in response times,” said fire Chief Dan Andrus.
Engine 1 was already taken out of service in the evenings for much of this year. When that decision was up for discussion, union representatives warned repeatedly of increased risk. However, in light of the multimillion-dollar budget gap city officials are trying to fill this year, the response to this proposal has been more muted.
“To come up with several million dollars, we accepted that we’re the largest department in the city,” said Chris Andrews, president of the fire officers union. “I could kick and scream until this is done. I don’t see an economic climate that would support that.”
If the city council passes Aspell’s budget, the total fire department budget would drop from $10.5 million allocated this year (of which $10.1 million will be spent) to $10 million in fiscal year 2010.
How Engine 1 is used
The city currently has four engine companies, a ladder truck and three ambulances. Engine 1 is housed at the Central Fire Station on North State Street, and its district includes downtown along with much of the center of city.
As with the other engines, in addition to fighting fires Engine 1 has a large amount of medical equipment on board from medications to an EKG machine. It carries a Jaws of Life to extricate people from car crashes, and it has equipment for technical rescues and hazardous material calls.
In 2007, the last year that Engine 1 was in service full time, Engine 1 and the engine at Broadway Station were the two busiest trucks in the city. Engine 1 responded to 2,488 calls that year, according to Andrus. (The department had a total of 7,600 calls in 2007, a figure that has decreased slightly since then.) From Jan. 1, 2008, to Thursday, Engine 1 responded to 519 incidents; just over half were in its district, an additional 23 percent were in the Southand 22 percent were either in the Heights or Penacook.
Like the fire department as a whole, the vast majority of calls to Engine 1’s district have been medical. Other common calls include car accidents, alarm activations and assisting invalids.
According to Andrus, there have been seven major fire calls between August 2008, when Engine 1 first went out of service at night, and March.
In three cases, Engine 1 was working. It was the first on scene at a blaze Portsmouth Street, where the team prevented the fire from spreading to an addition to a historic home. In that case, Engine 1 responded to the Heights district because that engine was on a medical call. Two other times, Engine 1 arrived second and helped set up a water supply.
In three other fires, Engine 1 would have been the second arriving unit. Andrus wrote in his budget narrative that its absence delayed fire attack, although it is difficult to estimate how much additional damage was caused. In the final instance, a Rumford Street resident was trapped on his roof when his home caught fire during a blizzard in March. Engine 1 was supposed to be the first on scene but was out of service.
Without Engine 1
The biggest question about taking Engine 1 out of service is how much response times would be affected. If a call came into the Central Fire Station’s district, the city’s only ladder truck could respond from that station. If it is unavailable, units would come from surrounding stations.
Andrus said that downtown response times could be two to three minutes slower. The biggest difference could be in the outlying stations, if a call comes while that district’s engine is tied up. According to Andrus, an average of two calls a day occur when there are two other incidents in progress, and three calls a week happen when there are three incidents in progress.
Engine 1 can arrive at a call in Penacook in five or six minutes. An engine from the Heights or the Southcould take 10 minutes to get there.
“In almost all the areas outside its own district, (Engine 1) is the second responding apparatus,” Andrus said.
Derek Martel, president of the firefighters union, said in the case of medical calls, when response times increase by two to four minutes, people could notice a difference.
“If someone’s having difficulty breathing, they’ll be in distress more and it might lead to more serious medical issues,” he said.
Martel said one possibility would be prioritizing calls - someone who slipped out of bed might wait longer while firefighters responded to someone with chest pain.
The second responder is also important when fire engines leave the city on mutual aid. Between January and May, Concord responded to more than 100 calls from surrounding towns, according to data provided by Holm. (It received mutual aid less than 25 times.) According to Holm’s data, average response times for all four engines hover around 5 minutes during the day. At night, when Engine 1 is frequently out of service, fewer calls came in. But average response times rose by about 30 seconds for the other engines.
In 2008, when Engine 1 was partially out at night, a report by Andrus shows that the number of responses by other engines did not increase compared with previous years. But Andrus attributes that to a policy change that limited the number of vehicles responding to automatic alarms during the day.
Andrews, of the firefighters union, said firefighters, more than the public, would notice a change if Engine 1 were gone.
“If you call 911, whether you’re on Rumford Street two blocks from Central (Fire Station) or somewhere else, you’re still going to get a fire truck,” Andrews said. “Firefighters would notice the change more than citizens because our workload would increase.”
In addition to responding to more calls, training would get more difficult, Andrews said. On a typical day, one shift of firefighters is doing some training, and Engine 1 can cover for an outlying station. With only three engines, either firefighters would have to stop training to take calls or response times would be delayed.
Removing Engine 1 would also affect the number of firefighters on duty. There are 22 people on every daytime shift. Without Engine 1, there would be a minimum of 19. National standards recommend that 14 firefighters be on site to fight a house fire.
“Without Engine 1, if Broadway is on a medical call, you’re down to 14, if nothing else is going on in the city,” Holm said.
Other cuts
The other significant cut to the fire department would be the elimination of a fire alarm and traffic technician position, which would save $76,000.
Two people are responsible for maintaining the city’s fire alarms, traffic signals and fiber optic cable network, and the budget would reduce that to one. Andrus said that means lights may be left flashing for longer.
A deputy chief position would be left unfilled when the current deputy chief leaves in November.
Ultimately, firefighters recognize that cuts are necessary this year. “I’m not sure what else there is to do short of raising taxes,” Martel said.
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