NM Fire Officials Eye Radical Restructuring

Sept. 25 -- LAS CRUCES, NM -- Faced with increasing criticism from the public and elected officials that they aren’t doing enough to address problems that caused six county fire districts to receive failing grades, Doña Ana County officials now plan to propose a much more radical restructuring of the fire department.

County Manager Fernando Macias and Fire Chief Nicholas Hempel will propose on Tuesday that the county’s 16 fire districts be consolidated to form just four districts and that additional career firefighters be hired so that three stations can be staffed around the clock.

They will ask the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday to authorize publication of the proposed changes with the hope that commissioners will act on the proposals in November.

Two weeks ago, Macias and Hempel presented two modest proposals to commissioners for addressing the problems — a pilot program to pay incentives to volunteers for each call responded to and additional money for advertising. But they faced an angry outcry from commissioners and the public that the proposals were too little and too late.

“I appreciate the fact that Mr. Macias heard our concerns and is coming back in a pretty prompt way,” said District 1 Commissioner Billy Garrett, the commissioner who was most critical of the proposals presented two weeks ago and strongly urged the county to consider more wholesale consolidation. “I think this is the right scale of approach.”

The changes are being proposed to correct problems that caused fire districts in Anthony, La Mesa, La Union, Las Alturas, Mesquite, and Radium Springs to be given failing grades by the Insurance Services Office (ISO), an independent ratings organization that grades fire agencies for the insurance industry.

The failing grades have caused property insurance rates in the six districts to skyrocket. Some insurance companies have even refused to write new policies in those areas, which has prompted deals for the sale of homes to be cancelled.

“It’s a very positive move,” said Louis Bencomo, fire chief in the Radium Springs, one of the failing districts. “I think it will definitely help us with a number of other things.”

The six districts received failing grades because they did not meet minimum ISO standards on the number of firefighters who must respond to structure fires. At least four firefighters in a district, on average, must respond to fires in that district, though the way those numbers are calculated is complex.

The two proposals approved by commissioners two weeks ago and those that will be unveiled on Tuesday are meant to assure that ISO response standards will be met, and all districts receive passing grades.

Macias said he hopes the ISO representative will return to reassess the districts in January and that new grades for those districts will be in place by July. The ISO representative, county officials said, will evaluate response data retroactively based on the new district structure.

Insurance rates should go back down if the districts receive passing grades.

“The redistricting is going to have a positive effect on the ISO ratings and get those turned around,” Chief Hempel said. “It’s going to prevent that from happening in the future. It’s also going to help us build a more cohesive fire protection system across the county.”

Under the proposals, six fire districts in the northern part of the county in Doña Ana, Fairacres, Garfield, Organ, Radium Springs, and Rincon would be combined into a single north district.

Four fire districts in the central part of the county in Las Alturas, Mesquite, South Valley and at New Mexico State University would be combined into a single central district.

Five districts in the southern part of the county in Anthony, Chamberino, Chaparral, La Mesa, and La Union would be combined to form a south district.

All current fire stations would remain open under the plan. District chiefs would become station chiefs under the new organization.

Combining the districts will mean each district will have a greater pool of volunteer to draw on. That should increase the number of volunteers that respond to fires and make the fire department better equipped to respond to emergencies of all types.

Only one current district, Santa Teresa, would retain its current dimensions and be unaffected by the proposed changes.

The reason for that is because Santa Teresa is home to three successful industrial parks that produce $2 billion in exports per year, which means the area has different fire protection needs. In addition, Santa Teresa received the highest grade of any of the county districts staffed primarily by volunteers, and adding other districts could lower their grade.

“They have an economic base,” Macias said. “To slip any in the ratings there would have a significant impact. We don’t want to risk that, not in terms of economic development. That district will probably remain on its own.”

Equally important to the strategy envisioned in the proposals is that there will be one station in each district that will be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by teams of four paid firefighters. That will require the county to add 10 new full-time, paid firefighters.

In the north district, Doña Ana station would be staffed round the clock. In the central district, the NMSU station would be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the south district, the Anthony station would be staffed at all times.

County officials say that if one station in each district is staffed by a team of four paid firefighters round the clock that should mean the ISO requirement that four firefighters respond to every structure fire will always be met.

“If we have a 24-7 station within the district, and if they report to all the fires in district, we’ll never have an automatic fail,” Macias said. “We’ll always meet that one criteria of having to have four responders to a fire within the district.”

The way that the ISO calculates how many firefighters respond to a fire is complicated. Firefighters who are on duty at a station count for more than volunteer firefighters who are on call, but must travel from elsewhere to reach a station. Firefighters on duty at a station count for more because they can get to a fire much more quickly than a volunteer who must first travel from home or work.

“From a dead sleep, they are on the road in less than a minute and a half,” Hempel said. “You reduce that response time.”

The biggest challenge to implementing the proposals will be finding the money to add 10 paid firefighters. Four paid firefighters would be added at both Doña Ana and Anthony, and two at NMSU.

The additional staff could cost the fire department $800,000 a year.

“I’m not sure how Mr. Macias is going to come up with the money for this,” Commissioner Garrett said. “But it’s important and needs to be done.”

Macias said he hopes to increase the number of paid firefighters in two ways — by shifting staff vacancies in other county departments to the fire department, and by adding new staff positions that will be funded through increases in property tax revenues that result from increases in property values.

Ben Rawson, chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, who is the sponsor of the proposals that will be introduced on Tuesday, said he is confident that the money can be found.

“It is doable,” he said.

The Doña Ana County Fire and Emergency Services Department, like county fire departments in all but one county in the state, will continue to be primarily staffed by volunteers. The county has 252 volunteer firefighters. They are supplemented by 16 paid firefighters. The proposals that will be introduced on Tuesday will increase the number of paid firefighters by 63 percent.

The number of volunteers varies significantly by district, from 8 in Radium Springs to 30 in Santa Teresa. Generally, those districts that received failing grades have the fewest volunteers. All other districts have at least 13 volunteers, considered adequate.

All of the districts that have an adequate number of volunteers earned passing grades from the ISO. They received grades of 4 to 6 on a 10-point scale — 1 being the highest. Those grades are considered satisfactory for volunteer fire agencies serving largely rural areas.

County fire officials are also trying to address issues raised by the ISO ratings by aggressively seeking to recruit volunteers and improving participation rates among existing volunteers.

The proposals approved by the Board of County Commissioners two weeks ago are meant to help with that. One will offer financial incentives to volunteer firefighters that will enable them to earn up to $6,000 a year. The other provides for $15,000 for advertising to increase volunteer recruitment.

At that meeting, Macias and Hempel recommended the merging of two districts, but otherwise seemed to discount the possibility of more dramatic consolidation.

What changed since then? They obviously heard the anger expressed two weeks ago, but Rawson said county officials also needed more time to discuss consolidation with district fire chiefs, volunteers, and paid staff to gain their support for the plan.

“A lot of it has to do with negotiations going on behind the scenes with the local fire districts,” Rawson said. “We needed to make sure with this proposal that we don’t have significant opposition from any of our volunteers or from paid staff.”

Not everyone responded positively to the proposed changes. Adolf Zubia, a former Las Cruces fire chief and Doña Ana County fire marshal, who blasted county officials for their lack of action at the commissioners meeting two weeks ago, dismissed the new proposals as “reactive.”

Zubia believes that all county fire districts should be merged to form a single unified department. He thinks the county should initiate a strategic planning process involving all stakeholders to address the fire department's problems.

He insists that solutions designed to address the ISO ratings are unwise, and fail to take into account that only 1 percent of emergency calls are for structure fires. He said response time for many other types of emergencies is also inadequate.

“I want timely response in all county districts, not just compliance with ISO,” Zubia said. “They’re not taking the big picture into consideration.”

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