Californian Fire Department Lagging in Average Response Time
That's too long, given that the federal standard is five minutes.
"We're not meeting federal standards a lot of the time," Morro Bay Fire Chief Mike Pond said.
Pond, who has worked at the department for 20 years, attributed the department's response times to increasing simultaneous calls, the elongated layout of the city that makes travel time-consuming, and the fact that firefighters must use a tent instead of a working fire station.
"If we continue on the road we're going and calls keep escalating the way they are, response times will exceed recognized standards," Pond said.
How quickly paramedics can be on the scene is of paramount importance for medical calls, because brain death starts in four to six minutes.
"Nationally accepted good practice is to be able to defibrillate within 5.5 minutes of the call to 911," according to a report from the Santa Ynez-based Hunt Research Corp.
Hunt was hired by the city to examine its fire department. Its report will be presented formally at tonight's City Council meeting.
During a structure fire, in five minutes the blaze will heat up the interior of the building and all combustible components to ignition temperature, the report states.
Pond responded to a call himself this week after several calls came in back to back, a situation that arises two to three times a week.
Currently, two firefighters are on duty all the time, with one firefighter on reserve.
"We want to increase the level of service, but we want to make sure we have the revenue to do it," Pond said.
The department received 1,515 emergency service calls in 2003, more than any other single station in the county. Larger cities typically have more than one station that can share the calls.
Though population numbers have remained largely unchanged over the past few years, the 2000 federal census reports that nearly 30 percent of the city's population is older than 60.
As the population ages, more people call -- and when people call back-to-back or at the same time, the department's three paramedic-firefighters are left scrambling.
Also, tourism is growing. Morro Bay attracts about 1.5 million visitors annually.
"It's a huge burden," said Stan House, chairman of the city emergency services ad hoc committee. "They receive a very wide variety of calls."
The Hunt report said "most incidents occur in the older core area of the city," with the greatest calls to senior homes Bayside Care Facility and Casa de Flores.
Two tactics that consultant Hunt suggests to reduce the number of calls is to educate citizens on what is and is not an emergency call through community outreach and to institute fees for repeat non-emergency calls to the same location.
Pond said the legal basis for such fees is unclear and emphasized that the city wouldn't take every suggestion in the report.