July 9, 2015

Whiy Fire Department is the wrong name

Phil Keisling, Governing - It's arguably the best known, least acknowledged and most inconvenient truth in local government: "Fire departments" -- in the precise meaning of that label -- no longer exist anywhere in America.

Given what they and their employees actually do, "Emergency Medical, Incident Response and Every-Once-in-a-While-an-Actual-Fire Department" would be far more accurate.

In 1980, according to the National Fire Protection Association, the nation's 30,000 fire departments responded to 10.8 million emergency calls. About 3 million were classified as fires. By 2013, total calls had nearly tripled to 31.6 million, while fire calls had plummeted to 1.24 million, of which just 500,000 of were actual structure fires. For America's 1.14 million career and volunteer firefighters, that works out to an average of just one structure fire every other year.

Fire officials vehemently defend their existing protocols. Firefighters, they say, need the extra time to suit up and board big rigs in case they must re-deploy to a real fire during a medical call. And they note that firefighters often save lives when they arrive first on the scene.

However, such "medical saves" aren't primarily the result of firefighters' superior medical-intervention skills. They're far more a function of the fact that too few paramedics and ambulances -- and still so many fire trucks and fire stations -- dot our urban and suburban landscapes, as many elected officials who've unsuccessfully tried to close a fire station know.

Most firefighters, at best, have only an Emergency Medical Technical certification. Although more certified paramedics are being hired, they still comprise less than 30 percent of many cities' forces. Paramedics also cost more -- a handy rationale for continuing to hire for the past, not the future -- and are increasingly hard to recruit and keep amidst job requirements that they also fight the occasional fire.

... Perhaps the biggest cost of the status quo is the least discussed. When scarce fire/emergency medical personnel are routinely dispatched for non-emergencies -- and then a bona fide, "every-minute-counts" emergency does occur, especially near a now-vacated station -- it's cold comfort when a 10-minute response time from a backup crew is a few minutes too slow to save a 65-year-old in sudden cardiac arrest, or a 7-year-old suffering a severe allergic reaction.

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