When Fire Station 6 in central Vancouver was closed on Dec. 31 because of the city’s budget problems, understandable concerns emerged about rising response times by the Vancouver Fire Department. In the area around the station at 3216 N.E. 112th Ave., average response times were estimated to increase by 2½ minutes, with a citywide response time increasing by an average 30 seconds.
Fortunately, the impact of closing the station (for an annual savings of $1.3 million) has been less than feared. Innovative department officials have come up with improved route planning and a new automated dispatch system using GPS on trucks. Credit also is due the hard-working firefighters, EMTs and dispatchers. Instead of 2½ minutes, the average response time in that area has increased by 68 seconds through the first three months of the year. Citywide, the increase has been 35 seconds. Longer average response times were shown in January, but through the first quarter of the year the averages have gone back down.
In a perfect world, the average response time by a public agency to any emergency would be the blink of an eye. In the real world, however, fire department officials must balance the need for instant service against the limited funding that taxpayers and politicians are willing to provide. That’s a tough balancing act, made tougher by sharp declines in revenue during the worst economic crisis in seven decades.
What Vancouver residents have learned from these recent statistics is that the negative impact doesn’t always have to be as bad as predicted, and that sky-is-falling prophecies can be tamped down by wise planners and dedicated rank-and-file responders.
The new figures were encouraging to Mary Elkin, who organized Friends of Fire Station 6 to protest the closure and support the reopening of the station. “I slept a lot better knowing (the average response times) weren’t as bad in the first three months as they were in January,” Elkin said in a Wednesday Columbian story by Andrea Damewood.
Elkin and other Fire Station 6 supporters continue to call for the city to accept a $2.3 million federal grant that would pay for restaffing and reopening the station. But as we noted in a March 30 editorial, that would be a mistake because the grant is “essentially a form of bureaucratic blackmail by the federal government.” Such a conclusion is based on the fact that the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant would require the city to maintain its firefighter staffing at 165 for two years, and any vacancies that might occur through attrition must be filled. City budget writers should not be backed into that kind of corner. They should be allowed to make their own decisions, free from federal micromanaging. Remember, too, that accepting the grant would be unfair to other city departments that would have to sacrifice more because of this federally mandated preferential treatment of the fire department. And if, heaven forbid, the economy gets even worse, it’s unwise to take any budget strategies off the table.
A few other statistics add to Vancouver residents’ understanding of this issue: 90 percent of the calls in the area of Fire Station 6 are answered in 8:32 minutes or less, 75 percent in 6:36 minutes or less and 50 percent in 5:14 minutes or less. The best strategy for public agencies during an economic catastrophe is to do the best they can with reduced resources. That’s what is happening with Vancouver Fire Department response times.
