By Cecilia Chan
East Valley Tribune
MESA, Ariz. — Mesa Fire and Medical Department is buying 35 portable automatic CPR machines that’ll provide consistent, uninterrupted chest compression to those suffering from a heart attack.
A $725,000 federal grant and a 10% city match or $75,000 will pay for the LUCAS cardiac resuscitation devices. It took the department four years to get the grant funding.
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“We are excited to get this equipment,” said Cori Hayes, assistant fire chief at the April 9 study session. “This is a safety tool. It would be carried on our ambulances because this is the most dangerous place for us to do CPR by hand. Our crews do exceptional CPR. But in the back of an ambulance when you’re driving down the road is a very dangerous time to have our crews standing up, providing CPR and providing good quality CPR.”
Vice Mayor Scott Somers attested to the value of the devices, having used them when he was a Phoenix firefighter.
“The number of lives saved went up (and) the CPR is better,” Somers said. “Using this device not only is it more consistent CPR, you just freed up a person to do another task that always has to be done.
“In addition to the safety, my mother was a paramedic in New York . She was doing CPR and the ambulance had to stop quickly and she went into the front of the ambulance and that ended her career.”
The new equipment, the update on the construction of Fire Stations 224, opening in November, and 205 due to open in a year were part of the department’s presentation on its proposed $121-million budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 .
Although the proposed budget includes $40,000 to contract with a medical director to provide consultation and direction in medical services and $290,000 to add a civilian EMT position, a paramedic position and converting two 12-hour EMT positions to 24 hours and two 12-hour paramedic positions to 24 hours, the department is cutting its spending.
The department in 2025 responded to 71,938 incidents, with the lion share of them related to medical calls. Additionally, 90% of the department’s emergency incidents that require lights and sirens were answered at 8 minutes and 53 seconds; 75% at 7 minutes and 28 seconds and 50% at 6 minutes.
City departments for the third straight year have been asked to reduce their base budgets by 2% due to rising costs and cuts in state revenues, such as the loss of the residential rental tax. Fire’s spending would be reduced by $1.4 million spread out over three fiscal years in order to minimize the impact.
For the 2026-27 budget year, the department proposed a $831,000 reduction by not filling a marketing/communications position and shifting four firefighter positions from the General Fund to the Public Safety Sales Tax Fund.
The proposed budget also includes ongoing continued support for the cancer screening program, which includes full body MRI scans. The program began in Fiscal Year 2019-20 with $210,000 coming from the Public Safety Sales tax. The program also received over $2 million in grant funding.
“There’s been 13 of our members that we’ve been able to identify cancers,” Assistant Chief Brian Darling said. “A couple of them have had to retire but all of the members that we identified cancers in, they are still with us. Without that program I don’t know if they would be here today.”
According to Darling, some of the cancers that have been identified in Mesa firefighters include esophageal, colorectal, Glioblastoma, kidney, leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid, testicular and various malignant skin tumors.
“I think the cancer screening is very important for our personnel, and obviously we can’t prevent all tragedies or deaths within our department,” said Mayor Mark Freeman , a retired Mesa Fire paramedic captain. “But as we screen and isolate it, we can help our personnel be healthy.”
City Manager Scott Butler called the program “extremely successful,” which gives firefighters peace of mind as they are exposed to dangerous toxins in their work.
“To be able to have these screenings on a consistent basis probably puts them and their families’ minds at rest when they get a clean bill of health,” Butler said. “When we’ve been able to identify some of these potentially very serious cancers early on and get preventative treatment, I know several of the individuals that were referenced had no idea anything was wrong until they had the screening. They felt great and had no clue that something was going on.”
Butler also said that having the program was a good business decision in helping recruit firefighters.
“If they know that we’re a department that takes care of our employees, that wants to ensure that they have all the resources and the medical care that they have, they feel better about joining Mesa Fire and Medical,” Butler said. “It’s smart business, along with being the right, responsible thing to do for our employees as well.”
Besides the screenings, the department relocated personal protective equipment storage from the bays and put exhaust extraction systems in the bays.
Freeman threw his full support for the proposed budget.
“Our public safety is non-negotiable,” he said. “We have to keep it as tip of the spear.”
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