By Kevin Clerici
Ventura County Star
VENTURA, Calif. — The July closure of an east Ventura fire station as a cost-cutting move has shaved $163,000 in overtime costs, but department response times to emergencies in the surrounding neighborhood have fallen sharply, records show.
Prior to the closure, engine crews arrived on scene of emergencies — structure fires, heart attacks, strokes, vehicle accidents, among others — within a department goal of five minutes about 40 percent of the time dating back to 2008.
In the three months since Fire Station 4 at 8303 Telephone Road shut down in July, crews — now dispatched from stations farther away — met the five-minute response time 13 percent of the time, the slowest performance in the city, according to information provided by the department.
The five other stations’ success level ranged from 35 percent to 63 percent during the same three-month period.
It took seven or more minutes for an engine company to arrive to Station 4 neighborhoods in 88 of 221 emergency calls from July 1 to Sept. 30.
Research shows someone suffering a cardiac arrest typically has six minutes to survive without intervention. For that reason, the National Fire Protection Agency has set the five-minute response standard from time of departure — a guideline, not a law — based on the time before a heart attack causes brain damage.
Fire studies also have shown that in the early stages of an active structure fire, the burn area can double in size every minute it is not suppressed.
Last month, a bathroom caught fire in an apartment in a complex in the 1600 block of Tapir Circle. According to fire crews, it likely would have taken only a few minutes for an engine at Station 4 to travel the mile from the firehouse to the complex. Instead, the engine at Station 3, about 2.5 miles away, was dispatched. The response time: 8:09 minutes, records show.
No one was injured in the blaze, which was contained to the single apartment, but “it was a scary experience,” recalled veteran Battalion Chief Luis Espinosa, who supervised the incident.
The longer it takes to arrive, he said, “you know there is going to be a greater challenge to make a quick attack and stop. If the fire advances, which can happen so fast, it’s going to be far more difficult to gain control.”
Ventura Assistant Fire Chief Don McPherson stressed that no area will ever go completely unprotected, but slower responses are unavoidable in areas furthest from the remaining station houses and at time of shrinking budgets and a mounting call load on too few stations.
Response studies show Ventura should have seven stations, not five, he said.
Delays are magnified any time there are simultaneous calls for service or calls for hard-to-reach areas such as the city’s two river bottoms.
A structure fire, for instance, demands a minimum response of three engine companies, the department’s lone ladder truck and on-duty Battalion Chief, who drives a Chevy Tahoe command vehicle. Put another way, during an active fire, only two engine companies are left to cover the rest of Ventura’s roughly 22 square miles.
To fill the void, the city has long-standing mutual aid agreements with the Oxnard and Ventura County fire departments to send units to assist with emergency calls.
When the city was debating the closure in June, opponents feared the relationship between the city and county could be strained if the county was relied on too heavily to assist the city. That’s hasn’t proved to be the case.
Among the city’s six strategically placed stations citywide, Station 4 had the second fewest calls for service last year — 1,428, or about 4 calls per day — and the largely residential neighborhood around it was best positioned to be served by the remaining stations, the chiefs said.
From July to September, emergency calls to Sector 4 around the firehouse averaged a little more than two per day, records show. Sector 4 covers neighborhoods around Petit Avenue and Johnson Drive and the North Bank community.
“We haven’t had to modify our approach,” said Ventura County Fire Operations Chief Mike LaPlant. “We have been watching it, and we have not seen a significant impact in the mutual aid.”
During that time, Ventura fire crews also have continued to fulfill its mutual aid commitments, particularly to unincorporated areas north of Ventura, he added.
Faced with $7.7 million shortfall, the City Council agreed in June to leave Station 4 empty and redeploy firefighters working there to other stations as a way to shave some $1.5 million in costs and reduce overtime.
The council also adopted millions in other cuts, including to police services and the elimination of 46 city positions across every department. Other steps involved consolidating the city’s two senior centers and reducing parks, tree and street maintenance. Even with the station closure, city spending on citywide safety services has grown from 52 percent to 56 percent of the city’s $80 million operating budget in the new fiscal year.
While response times to emergencies have declined, the closure has produced expected savings. Without having to staff the station, the city saved $163,000 in overtime costs in the third quarter, compared with the same period last year, finance records show.
Those savings could go up in coming months because summer historically is a popular time for firefighters to take vacation, requiring others to fill their shifts.
McPherson said the department is on pace to live within its $14.5 million budget, and is constantly looking at ways to better serve the community. Still, when response times start to get into 7- or 8-minute range, “you are going to see more bad things happen.”
“We hope this is temporary reduction,” he said of the station closure. “We hope this doesn’t turn into the new normal.”
Ventura Mayor Bill Fulton said the safety of residents is a top concern. Going forward, he said, “I think we need to look more clearly at the nature of the calls.”
“With limited resources, we have to look at which calls are truly time sensitive,” he added. “Fires obviously are. Cardiac arrest and stroke calls are. But I am not sure all calls are all time sensitive.”
Copyright 2010 Ventura County Star