Yesterday afternoon I was putting gas in my car. Something that I enjoy less and less. Even though we purchased a “fuel efficient” car it seems to be less efficient and more hungry as time goes by. So as I smelled my money going into the gas tank I heard the all to familiar sound of a fire truck siren coming from a distance making everyone aware that they were on their way to some sort of life threatening emergency or in this case a huge fire that must have been in a very tall building. As the truck came up to the intersection all the lights turned in it's favor thanks to the system on the emergency vehicles that automatically changes lights on approach to green so they do not have to fight a red light. I wish we had that when I was a paramedic pretty cool toy. The truck a bright shiny red very long 2007 Pearce XT tractor-drawn ladder truck is a marvel to be seen. It is so long that it requires a driver in the back to steer the back end or tiller to assist the truck in making turns. It is truly a wonderful work of craftsmanship. But this post is not about the cool toy to change lights, or the cool paint, or how fantastic the truck is maintained, or how well the man in the back is able to drive in sync with the engineer in the front. No it is not about that at all. What it is about is why is this truck here at all.
A 100 foot ladder will cover a very tall building. Not many tall buildings in east clark county. Vancouver Fire has two of these trucks. At a cost of just over $1,000,000 each. Plus the up keep on these trucks is not cheap. The following estimate is from another department that owns very similar trucks.
So, at some point in the past Vancouver fire made the argument that they needed these trucks and the people bought their argument and the trucks. Ok, I understand that. Fire Departments love their new trucks. However, I think that trucks like these should not be used on just any calls. These are very expensive trucks, They should only be used on Fire or calls in which there is a high degree of suspicion that a ladder is going to be needed. Remember that not many buildings in east county are more than three storys. These trucks should not be running medical calls which is the majority of the calls that the fire department runs. These are calls that fire department provides first responder services and does not transport. They provide care for about 4-5 minutes until AMR arrives and then they turn over care to the AMR Paramedics and help them load the patients into the ambulance and then they go back to their station. Now don't get me wrong here. I am not saying in any way that Firemen are not needed. They provide a very necessary service. They put their lives on the line every day. (So do AMR paramedics, but no one ever praises them.) What I am saying is park the million dollar truck and only use it when you need it. It will last longer that way. Why make the people of this county have to buy another one in a few years because this one is worn out and you want a new one now. Hood River Fire Department replaced its fire truck in 1983. The last time it had been replace was in the 60's because of low miles. They do not take the truck to medical calls, they took the ambulance and volunteers took their own cars thus the fire truck only had 6500 miles on it when it came time to replace it. Most of the miles were it's trip from back east when it was purchased.
The Fire Department will tell you that not taking that ladder truck with them to the minor calls will prevent them from having it from the "major" call that may come in while they are away from the station. Or that they can not afford to hire fire personnel to man a rescue unit during these tough economic times. Yet, let's remember that there are no buildings in east county that warrant a ladder truck of that size, so actually the prudent thing to do is to put a regular ladder truck at the station that houses the tiller truck and make the tiller truck a secondary response vehicle. This would put miles on a much less expensive vehicle that is more appropriate to the type of work that will be asked of it. As for the argument of not enough money to hire more staff. Lets look to the way Vancouver Fire handles their money.
They purchased and built Pacific Park Fire Station 10, Northeast 164th Avenue and 15th Street, to the cost of at least $3 million. In December of 2007 Don Bivins said that this new station would shave 57 seconds off of the average response times of 5 minutes. Ok, not a huge bang for your buck, but still not too shabby. Then the station opened this year and at nearly the same moment they announced they were shutting down station 6, 7110 N.E. 63rd St. due to budget cut backs. So Don Bivins, remember Don? He promised 57 seconds off of the 5 min response times? He reported that now the loss of Station 6 is going to cause a 2.5 min increase in response times in the area of station 6 response district and 30 seconds to the entire vancouver central response area. So we have this really pretty fire station where that will cut 57 seconds off of response times, and we are closing a station that is adding 2.5 min to response times. Spock would say that is illogical.
So lets go back to that million dollar ladder truck. Should we be driving it all over town and putting miles on it or should we park it and make it a secondary response vehical so in two to three years when it needs work the fire department doesn't come to us and say, we need another one, look, we needed it so much we wore it out. I say, NO, Lets use common sense.
So my recommendation? Put a ladder truck that we most likely already have at the station with the tiller and run it on the calls and only break out the tiller when we magically pop out a 7 story building in East county somewhere that needs it.
