Iredell in Transition :: Powered by statesville.com and mooresvilletribune.com

Growth sparks change in fire departments, EMS

Donna Swicegood | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | May 1, 2008

Last year, Troutman Fire Department mounted a campaign to ensure a certain amount of funding for each year.

One reason the department — which has one of the highest call volumes of local volunteer fire departments — decided to press for a voted-in fire tax district was to plan for the growth headed toward that area.

“This area is growing at a rapid rate,” Assistant Chief Keith Troutman said.

Voters in the Barringer and Fallstown townships overwhelmingly voted to support a tax district, which means all property tax dollars earmarked for fire tax generated in Troutman’s district will stay there.

Troutman said one of the advantages of knowing what funds will be available each year is planning for the growth that’s coming at the community from all sides.

The department is considering is hiring some full-time personnel. For now, Troutman, along with a lot of county volunteer fire departments, have part-time employees to man the station during peak call hours.

Gone are the days when volunteers who work in the community respond to calls from their jobs, Troutman said.

“Our call volume is going through the roof, and it’s getting harder to keep up with a mostly volunteer department,” he said.

A third station, which would serve the area around Fern Hill Road and Perth Road, is being looked at to provide quicker service to areas that are now more than 5 miles from either Troutman’s main station in town or the substation on Pineville Road.

Coping with growth
Cool Springs Chief Andy Webster, who has been in the fire service more than 20 years, said his department is coping with growth on a slower rate than Troutman, but it is an issue.
“Our area still has a lot of open land, but we do have developed areas,” he said.

Webster said he sees changes coming in the volunteer fire service, from going to more paid personnel to those bordering the corporate limits of Statesville and Mooresville forming partnerships with the two municipal departments.

Like other firefighters, Webster said he knows growth brings additional tax revenues and viability to an area, but lack of planning can bring additional headaches for emergency crews.

He said his department does run into problems in subdivisions with narrow streets that allow little room to maneuver a large fire truck.

But, he said, the much more pressing problem is availability of water. “Developers are able to go in and put in a small water line, and it won’t support a fire hydrant,” he said.

Statesville Fire
Statesville Fire Chief David Bullins said thanks to planning, those issues aren’t as big a problem for his department.

But like his counterparts in the volunteer service, Bullins, who has been on the job since December, said SFD will be growing along with the city.

Plans are under way for a fourth SFD station for fall 2009 — the first new station for them since the mid 1970s. Hiring for that station will be the first significant addition of personnel since 1975, when Station 3 came on line.

Adding stations is not the only way in which Bullins and the SFD plans to address growth, he said.

He said the department may have to look at relocating Station 1 in the future, possibly to the south to address the new developments coming in from the Larkin area at Interstate 77’s Exit 45 and from the Troutman area.

He said he has begun working on various scenarios, using a map that details service areas and the call numbers for those areas.

“What’s the next area that’s going to need a fire station?” he said. “And it’s not just where, but when. This takes us years down the road.”

Emergency partners
Bullins said forming partnerships with other emergency providers may be a way of addressing additional needs and keeping expenditures as low as possible.

David Cloer, Iredell EMS director, said EMS has already taken that step, running crews out of two volunteer fire stations — Lake Norman and Trinity.

He said that could be a way to provide ambulance crews to needed areas without the expense of building a structure.

Like others in the emergency services field, Cloer and EMS crews are looking for ways to meet the increasing number of calls.

“We’re trying to stay ahead of (the growth),” Cloer said.

The idea of combining services with fire departments is a viable idea that could place at least a paramedic-manned, quick-response vehicle in areas where the call numbers don’t justify a full ambulance crew.

That’s in place on the Brawley School Road peninsula where a QRV is stationed at Lake Norman Fire Department.

A QRV cannot transport a patient, but it can mean a paramedic is on the scene to begin advanced life support procedures. A transport unit is dispatched at the same time, and can take the patient to the hospital when it arrives.

Cloer said placing an ambulance with a two-person crew costs about $58,000 a year per person with salary and benefits and an ambulance is about $150,000. A minimum of six people must be hired to man one base.

Coping with the growth means making small steps, Cloer said. “In the past five years, we’ve added two-and-a-half (QRV) trucks. That’s the most we’ve added since 1986,” he said. “We’ll keep adding a little bit here and a little bit there.”

Photo: A Mt. Mourne fire fighter soaks a burning home on Langtree Road in Mooresville during training last year. Regan Hill photo

Comments

It costs quite a bit more than $58,000 per person to put an ambulance on the road 24 hours 7 days a week…the number is closer to $300k a year. If towns and counties want the service, they have to be willing to pay for it.

Posted by Rich Bowers on 05.01.2008 at 03:00 pm

Rich,

I think you misread the article. It stated that the cost is 58k per person and it takes six people to staff a unit. plus the purchase price of 150k for a stocked ambulance.

Posted by sam jphnson on 06.20.2008 at 09:24 pm