There have been several fires the last few months with engines coming from all over Contra Costa County to lend a helping hand. During tonight’s East Contra Costa Fire Protection District meeting, I would encourage the Board to remove the word “unit” and replace it with “engine” or “Battalion Chief” when we talk about shared resources during future operational reports.
By doing so, it better educates the public on the usage of resources while simplifying where the resources are coming from—my guess is folks in Brentwood won’t like that their back up is coming all the way from Antioch.
According to the staff report, during the month of February, the District received auto aid from Contra Costa Fire 33 times with them sending 54-units. The District sent auto aid to Contra Costa County Fire 14 times providing them with 18 units
Stop and think about that for a moment, we received 54-units from CONFIRE, but what does that mean?
A Battalion Chief showed up or did 54-engines show up? More importantly, it’s a blanket statement without much thought because what should be reported is where exactly those 54-units are coming from.
For example, do folks in Brentwood realize their backup is coming all the way from Antioch? If so, how many times was an engine Station 82, 83, or 88 in Brentwood? Or, how often was the BC at one of our incidents as opposed to the engine.
Or did Engine 85 out of Pittsburg or 86 out of Bay Point head out to East County? I remember there was an incident not too long ago where our backup was coming all the way from Walnut Creek.
The Board should no longer accept the term “unit” in its monthly report. The use of 54-units should be broken down in order to educate the public on where our backup is coming from. The report should read ___ Battalion Chiefs were provided while Antioch Stations provided ___ number of engines, Pittsburg provided ___ number of engines, Bay Point provided ___ number of engines and I could go on but you get the point.
The reverse is true for the support we provide. Was it our Battalion Chief who headed into CONFIRE territory or was it our engine. You break that down by station for the public to highlight how many times our resources left the District.
The point is, by breaking down where the engines/BC are coming from, it gets residents attention pretty quickly as opposed to saying they provided 54-units and it is in one ear and out the other. You could also go a step further and report on each CONFIRE stations response time to an incident.
What the chief is not doing is breaking down the engine vs. Battalion Chief which is two separate types of units; it’s time to begin reporting it as such. It only will better help educate the public on how services are being provided.
More importantly, a majority of people travel on Highway 4, they can begin to do the math if they start seeing Pittsburg or Pinole engines responding to East County incidents. Talk about a wake-up call!
By modifying how the Chief provides his operational report, it now has more of an impact on the community while highlighting the lack of resources within the District.
February Response Times
The month of February had a total of 487 calls with an average response time of 7:18 minutes. Comparing to the 572 calls in January, the average response time was 7:10 minutes.
- Station 52: 141 calls with an average response time of 6:48
- Station 54 (closed): had 121 calls with an average response time of 7:36
- Station 59: had 58 calls with an average response time of 7:32
- Station 93: had 141 calls with an average response time of 6:26
- Station 94: had 8 calls with an average response time of 6:10
- Station 95 (closed): had 21 calls with an average response time of 12:09
- CalFire Station 16: had 16 calls with an average response time of 13:39 minutes
Item D1: Discussion of Policy on Disposition of Surplus District Real Property
- Station 57 is located at 3024 First Street in Byron. Using two local realtors comparable properties have sold in the area between $125,000 and $200,000.
- Station 58 is located at 1535 Discovery Bay Blvd. in Discovery Bay. Using to local realtors comparable properties have sold in the area between $200,000 and $300,000.
- Currently commercial property within the fire district is leasing on average between $1.00 and $1.50 a square foot.
Finally, this talk about moving the Chief and staff to one of the closed stations (Discovery Bay) makes little financial sense as the staff report indicates the District would need to invest four major areas of concern at a cost $75,000 plus engineering plans, permits and fire protection systems. You then have moving costs of other expenses.
Item D2: Establish Date and District Workshop and Approve Workshop Agenda
Here is a look at a tentative agenda for a Workshop that will be held in the near future to help get the Board brought up to speed on where the District has been, today’s reality, and where it may head in the future.
Staff is recommending having a Saturday workshop in March to cover the following areas;
- History of the District
- Organizational structure
- Current service model and District infrastructure
- District finances -revenue and expenses
- Revenue enhancement options
- Review of Districts parcel tax in June 2012 (Measure S)
- Discussion of District goals and objectives for the upcoming year
- Next steps
One glaring omission in this tentative agenda would be communication and outreach to the public which is next to nothing. The district needs to ensure the public is aware the guys are not just sitting around in stations twiddling their thumbs, some sort of alerts and recaps of incidents should be a major goal prior to the potential next revenue enhancement.
Meeting Details:
Monday March4, 2013–6:30P.M.
Meeting Location: 3231 Main Street, Oakley
3 comments
Great piece, I agree. The word unit should be broken down to create more of an awareness of what is actually being shared
The information is readily available, even in real time, although not due to any action of the Board. If you have an iPhone or Android smartphone, download a free application called “PulsePoint” and choose the ECCFPD feed. It will indicate which fire units are responding to an emergency as they are dispatched. Most CONFIRE units will be indicated by E18x or Q18x. BC5 is our Batallion Chief, BC2 or BC8 are CONFIRE Batallion Chiefs, and 5100 is Chief Henderson. I am using it a lot to get an idea of what is going on in real time. You can also set it to get push notifications of whatever type of incident you want to know about immediately. For a while, you could also turn on a live radio feed from the CONFIRE dispatch center, but that is no longer available on the ECCFPD feed, only on the CCCFPD feed. I have downloaded and use an app called “5-O Radio” and listen in when I can.
Another useful tool is a scanner. You can listen to the local PD and fire channels and hear everything. When someone calls 911, the call goes to police dispatch first and they transfer to Fire. It is amazing how the information PD gives out is different than fire. And the delay between PD being advised and when fire is actually dispatched. You learn alot and are constantly amazed with the calls. Sometimes all you can do is sit and laugh. Or sometimes you can be a big help. A few months ago I heard fire dispatched to my neighbors address. A women was calling in and saying that she was hurt in the field behind the house. Well, since we knew that no one was home next door we knew something wasn’t right. By the time fire arrived, we had already checked and knew no one was in the back fields. We had a suggestion where she might be based on our knowledge of the area. Sure enough that was where she was.
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