By HARRY R. CARTER PH.D.

For more years than we would care to remember, we have heard the hackneyed phrase that the level of fire responses dictates the size of the fire department. What a load of nonsense. Unfortunately, far too many fire departments have reduced their staffs be cause the runs have gone down. Then, when real fires occur, their ability is limited to hosing down the ruins.

Our studies have shown us that much more attention must be paid to the hazards to be protected and the tasks to be accomplished. While it may be true that certain reductions may be occasionally warranted, these cuts must be based on a proper evaluation of the community in question. In this article, we intend to prime your mental pump with some questions that can help you to study your municipality. By becoming intimately familiar with your town, you can "tailor the fire department to the community."

One of your primary concerns should be in the area of municipal demographics. We are speaking about people, growth and development trends. You must become knowledgeable in the type of community in which you really live. Here are a few things you may need to address:

A. What is your natural environment?
B. How does your natural environment affect fire department operations?
C. What level of water exists in your environment?
D. What does your community's built environment look like?
E. Are you urban or are you rural? What about the suburbs?
F. What is your annual response level?

The responses to these questions will point you in the direction of the future. It is a simple fact of life that you cannot move forward if you do not know where you are. Your answers can point you in the proper direction. Let us first look at your natural environment. Which area are you most like:

1. Phoenix (hot and dry/no winter to speak of)?
2. Newark, NJ (hot and humid in the summer/cold and damp in the winter)?
3. Adelphia, NJ (hot and humid in the summer/cold and damp in the winter)?
4. The Pine Barrens area of central New Jersey (sandy soil/pine trees/tinderbox dry)?
5. Seattle (wet/damp/moist, or so our friends from out there have said)?

How does the environment affect your operations? In each of these areas, the impact of the natural environment has operational consequences for the fire department. Heat requires you to staff rehab sectors which must begin to function very quickly. Dampne ss makes both heat and cold worse. Dryness makes the fires which may occur in the wildfire/interface areas worse.

You must create an organization which reflects your environmental needs. For example, we will not be acquiring brush vehicles or tankers for Newark in the immediate future. However, the nearby Adelphia Fire Company just placed a new brushfire vehicle into service and we may well need to replace the tractor for our 6,800-gallon water tanker very shortly. Ah, but in Adelphia we do have a different environment. We can still count the trees in square-mile areas.

Now that we have mentioned water tankers, let us turn to the matter of how much and what type of water supplies exist in your community. The lack of a municipal water supply has a direct impact upon your ability to fight fire. The texts tell us that we ha ve to arrive before fire can flash over. We then must apply a sufficient amount of water to absorb the heat being generated.

Hard experience in the urban environment has taught us that it is easier when you can drop a supply line at the corner and stretch in. Experience as a water supply sector officer in a tanker shuttle operation has also taught us a thing or two about water supply. Your environment determines how you will fight fire. Pay attention to the clues as you plan for the future. Our next question adds more fuel to the organizational planning fire (pun intended). What has your community allowed to be built into the natural environment?

Are the buildings tall and close together? Are the buildings short and far apart? Are they made from wood, concrete, steel or some brand-new cost-saving material designed to save a buck for the developers? These are all critical questions.

Let us compare Newark and Adelphia. In Newark, the buildings in the residential neighborhoods are largely built from lumber. The same holds true in Adelphia. However, it is in the density differences where we observe the greatest impact on the potential f ire problems. In many city neighborhoods, the buildings are constructed to a minimum separation of four feet.

And they run this way for many blocks in succession. In Adelphia, homes are built much farther apart. And even in the condominium and townhouse developments, there are required separations. These provide much-needed exposure protection in those cases when fire occurs.

In addition to construction density, we must mention population density. This is the crux of the "are you rural or are you urban" dichotomy. People = potential for service delivery.

More than 250,000 people live within the 23.6 square miles which make up Newark (more than half of the land mass is industrially, commercially or institutionally occupied). In the whole of Howell Township, of which Adelphia is one small section, about 45, 000 people live within the 67 square miles of available community. In an average year, Newark handles over 15,000 calls for assistance. In Adelphia, we are closer to 300.

It has been our personal experience that more people equals more work for the fire department. We can remember the time when a new development opened up in Adelphia's district. We experienced several fire calls during the week when the first 10 families m oved in. Their homes all experienced the same cooking-related smoke detector malfunctions.

Conversely, during the early years of my employment with the Newark Fire Department, the population was much greater. And in those days, the work load was much higher. As changes in population occurred, alterations to our response levels also came about. We are now a much smaller organization than the one we joined back in 1973.

So you can see that our experience in both venues has had a measurable outcome. Fewer people equates to a lower work level on the one hand. And a growth in the other situation has increased our potential for service delivery. These are the types of trends which you must monitor if you are to truly develop a proper-size fire organization.

Lastly, we need to be mindful of the level of activity. While it is our contention that you must protect the risk, some concern must be had for the actual activity level of your fire department. In the real world, it would not make any sense to staff Adel phia for a Newark level of risk and response. That would be a classic example of the concept of overkill. It would be difficult to justify the expense of maintaining a force of 108-130 fire personnel to cover the 250 to 300 annual responses of their subur ban associates.

Conversely, you could hardly expect to protect the City of Newark with a suburban level of equipment and personnel. Major fires occur with a greater frequency. And the potential for them to spread beyond the area of their initial onset is also much higher than in the suburbs.

We are not saying that fewer runs, in and of itself, justifies a smaller fire department. What we are saying is that you should develop an understanding of what can happen in your community. Plan for the worst, but staff for the average. And as the tempo of activity changes, your fire protection delivery plan should be flexing and changing in response to your research. If things seem to be happening to you, then your planning is faulty. If things seem to fall into place, then you are ahead of the change c urve.

Your actual plan for operations should state where the additional help will come from for the periodic serious incidents which occur. This is where mutual aid and the recall of off-duty forces come in. In this way, you can vary the response of your agency to the actual needs as they develop. And you can cover a range of potential problems in a flexible manner.

However, you cannot do this if you are not aware of your community's needs. That is the purpose behind this article. Hopefully, we have equipped you with a number of questions to help you assess the actual nature of your community. It is up to you to find out the what and how of your community's protection needs, then provide for them in a thorough and studied manner. "Know it before you need it" is a helpful little planning motto. Learn it, live it.

Situations change. Never let your information go out of date. In high-growth areas, the numbers can change over the course of 12-18 months. You need to be ahead of trends to provide protection for the new challenges which lie just ahead of you.