Fairfield Fire and EMS

Fairfield Fire and EMS Testimony

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Testimony to Carroll Valley Borough Council, Sep. 14th. 2004:
Intro: I am Andrew J Aldrich, I live here in Carroll Valley.

Overview: Good evening council members and Carroll Valley residents I want you all to understand that 100% of your Emergency Services are provided by the volunteer efforts of your neighbors. There are no tax dollars funding the provisions for Emergency Services for your community. The Fairfield Fire & EMS organization is the first due, that is the first agency to respond to your call for help.

We are made up of volunteers from all walks of life. Our Chief is a Professional Firefighter in Howard Cty, MD and a certified Paramedic. Our EMS Captain is a Federal Judge, I am the company President, and I am a Satellite Communications Engineer. The list goes on to include retirees and high school students………..all Neighbors helping neighbors……….at no profit to ourselves other than the personal satisfaction of helping those in need.

Last evening a committee planned our budget for next year, the numbers came to a half a million dollars. Money that will be raised by BINGO, dinners, grants, outright donations, ambulance call billing and a 2% refund from your fire insurance premiums, provided your insurer is from outside of PA.

Everything we do to raise funds allows us to give you better service.

I have elected to appear this evening to present information that will indicate why a sprinkler ordinance will benefit this community.The key element in providing assistance to a victim of a house fire is a rapid response.

Some typical response scenarios for our company are:
Tues Eve 7:30…..a party discovers a fire and calls 911
County Control talks to the excited caller, gets the pertinent information, determines the Fire Co must be dispatched. A computer aided dispatch system sets up the automated radio codes that send alert tones to our pagers. At company 2, Fairfield that would start the siren, and activate an in-house strobe system alerting anyone at the station of a call. When the tones end (10 sec.) the dispatcher broadcasts by voice the details of the call, type, address, cross streets, and if any known entrapment situation exists.

I used Tues at 7:30 because that is the approximate time now and Tues evening is also our weekly training night. I would expect 15-20 persons to be present at the station at this time. Response to this alarm would have equipment rolling out of the station door in about 3 minutes, that is listen to the call, don full turnout fire fighting gear, start engine, wait for air brake pressure, wait for engine bay door to fully open……some young drivers have been known to miss this step so we keep a building maintenance line item in our budget.

Once the rolling stock is on the street various factors enter the picture to determine response time. Is it daylight, or dark, is it raining, snowing, how far away is the destination address, top of Jacks Mtn, around the mountain at the end of Country Club Trail so you can see the Fire Dept is not there instantly….there must be a time factor involved.

Now let me add to the scenario, it is now 11:45 at night, our nearest driver is close by, and firefighters live within 3 miles of the station. Same call to county, same dispatch radio tones, some travel time for responders, still have to put on gear, get engine started….time now is up to maybe 8 minutes till we are on the street.

Now it is 4:30 in the morning, all are in deep sleep, pagers go off, wake up, get up, find shoes and hopefully some clothes, out to your vehicle and it is cold and windows fogged and the driver is sleepy. The response will slow a couple more minutes..so now it is 10 minutes and we are rolling out the door.

Could it be quicker, sure if the driver is still just around the corner but nothing is gained by him responding alone or with the first arriving firefighter. An empty engine arriving at a call is useless so all response protocols must be followed on all calls. There must be a team on the responding piece.

Now lets apply our environment to the scenario, is it raining, is it snowing, has it been snowing for some time?? All these factors will add delay to our response to your immediate need.

Now I would like to insert some assistance from an in-house sprinkler…………Is it going to put out the fire, probably not….but it is going to slow the spread of the fire to build in that time window that we need to offset our response delays and keep a blaze to a manageable size that we can suppress on arrival.

I would like to apply the response scenarios I presented to a recent call that is too familiar to many here. The Black Bass Trail fire occurred probably due to an electrical malfunction in the garage attached to the house. Due to the on going Liberty development hearings some of our members were either at the station or had just arrived home, they were awake, they were dressed and were able to respond rapidly. The address was reasonably close to the station and we were able to place an engine on scene in about 5-6 minutes.

Fire had fully engulfed the garage and had begun to penetrate the side wall of the structure. On arrival the officer in command determined that all occupants were out of the house so there were no life safety issues to deal with. An exterior attack was begun due to the large amount of fire. The floor plan did not allow for direct attack on the fire thru windows and it continued to spread up into the second floor and finally thru the roof. This became a surround and drown situation because it was too dangerous to place fire fighters inside the structure.

Had this house contained a sprinkler system we believe it would have slowed the fire extension within the house enough to allow an interior attack and probably leave the structure repairable.

In closing I would like to mention we have some 300 members, however, about 40 are active, that is responding to more than 5 calls a year. We continually lose our most active members who search for employment as professional firefighters. The trend for neighbors to join our ranks is dwindling and the time approaches where we as a fully volunteer service will no longer be able to provide for your needs.

Frederick County MD recently assigned paid municipal ambulance personnel to the Emmitsburg area; the immediate impact to residents was the levying of a Fire Tax to pay for the services. We here at Fairfield anticipate having to add paid ambulance attendants to our service prior to the start of the Ski Liberty season. Ski Liberty calls severely impacts our medical responders. We are still reviewing how we are going to pay for this issue.

In summary, I would like to repeat the addition of this ordinance to your building codes will add a margin of time to our emergency response. A margin that may have kept the Black Bass fire to a manageable situation.
We are continually in need of more members who believe the Volunteer Fire Service can survive in Adams County and who will help to see that happen.

Are there any questions: