By Kristin Davis
The Virginian-Pilot
CHESAPEAKE, Va. — In the early afternoon of May 23, two fire stations responded to a blaze on Ford Road in Deep Creek.
The first firefighters arrived in under eight minutes.
The ladder company responsible for shutting off utilities, providing ventilation to the burning house and searching for victims took nearly nine minutes longer – and they’d been just two miles away.
The ladder truck was too heavy to cross the Gilmerton Bridge, which lay along the most direct route. Firefighters had to circle up Interstate 64 on a trek that stretched more than nine miles.
Weight restrictions on city bridges have slowed emergency responders 5,392 times since 2003, the Chesapeake Fire Department reports. Draw-bridge openings delayed them another 4,730 times.
Chesapeake spreads across 353 square miles and has the most bridges of any city in the eastern part of the state . Many of them are deteriorating.
“Red lights and sirens don’t make us any lighter,” interim Fire Chief Ed Elliott said. “We either take another route around it or another station may get there first.”
Response times were among several issues targeted in a recent city audit of the Fire Department.
It reported that the department only “incrementally addressed” a National Fire Protection Association standard requiring a five-minute first-response time 90 percent of the time by 2025 and that it had no system in place to document why calls were not met that quickly .
A master plan adopted by the department in 2005 called for eight new fire stations and the relocation of two by 2025.
Fire officials say the new stations would provide enough coverage to meet the five-minute goal, and would do so in places that are now geographically impossible to reach so quickly.
There have been only three new fire stations in Chesapeake since the early 1970s. Two were relocated.
Elliott said a number of factors contribute to slower response times, such as new safety standards requiring firefighters to buckle their seat belts before a truck rolls, coming to complete stops at red lights and stop signs, and traveling no more than 10 mph over the speed limit.
And blocked railroad crossings have hindered emergency responders nearly 6,000 times since 2003.
Bridges, however, are the biggest issue – they accounted for 41 percent of the 24,464 incidents that slowed response times.
The department aims to arrive within seven minutes 75 percent of the time. In 2005, the goal was met 69 percent of the time. It was met 62 percent of the time in 2006 and 51 percent of the time in 2007.
Averages fluctuated by no more than about 10 seconds in Virginia Beach, Suffolk and Norfolk during those years, officials for the cities reported. Most calculations vary somewhat, with some cities lumping EMS and fire calls together and some separating the two. Some cities figure in call processing – how long it takes from the time the 9 11 call comes in until it is dispatched. Some don’t.
Portsmouth reported improved average response times, but its six-minute goal was met in a smaller percentage of incidents from 2005 to 2007.
Weight restrictions on bridges in Chesapeake began in late 2005, said Capt. Steve Johnson, Fire Department spokesman. Routes suddenly had to be refigured, he said.
One restriction came with a single day’s notice when inspectors deemed it unsafe, Elliott said.
Eleven bridges used by Chesapeake’s responders now have some restrictions. Some bridges can’t support any type of emergency vehicle.
Some bridges can be crossed on the way to an emergency call but not on the return trip.
Some, such as the Gilmerton Bridge, cannot handle heavier apparatus, such as a ladder truck.
The detour to the house fire on Ford Road took 17 minutes. No one was injured, and firefighters were able to suppress the blaze, which resulted in $5,500 in damage.
Firefighters at Station 1 in South Norfolk used to take the 22nd Street overpass when a railroad crossing – beyond which half their first-run area lies – was blocked by a train. The overpass now is almost completely restricted.
Other initiatives can improve response times, Elliott said. Ambulances that once spent half an hour to 45 minutes at Chesapeake General Hospital transferring a patient are now out in 15, he said.
“We put together a task force and the problem was resolved,” he said.
New technology that automatically dispatches units to scenes could cut down on response time, said Capt. Sam Gulisano of the Chesapeake Fire Department. So could geographic information systems inside fire apparatus.
The department has lacked funding for that as well, leaving emergency responders to flip through map books and track alternate routes when restricted bridges stand in the way.