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Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 13
Alderwoman Lu

Thank you. Ms. McCutcheon how did you learn to talk so fast.

Ms. Harper
(Inaudible).

Alderwoman Lu

No, it was great. Thank you. That was really incredible it all made sense, so thank you for getting so much
information out in such a short period of time.

Ms. Harper

You're welcome.
President Wilshire
Alderman Jette?
Alderman Jette

Thank you, Madam President. And thank you for that report. Obviously as fast as you talked, you covered
a lot. But it is up to us to all go and look at this report and study it. | tried to read through it before tonight
but | am looking forward to going back and looking at it in more detail. But while you are here, one of the
things that struck me was that chart where you showed, | don’t know if | have the number correctly, it was a
small number, was it 2% of all calls are related to fire? Is that typical of fire departments? Is that typical is
that what we should be expecting or should we look, you know, a lot of those calls are emergency medical
calls. We do have an ambulance service that we are contracted with. Do other Departments handle those
medical calls like we do or do they contract out the medical part and concentrate on the more emergency,
you know, the fire calls and those types of things?

Mr. McCutcheon

Those are good questions. So the answer is typically if you are a Department that runs EMS, that your call
volume for fire-related calls are going to be somewhere in or around 3%. So whether we are looking at
Florida, New Hampshire, New York, Colorado, they are all about the same. The reason for that is the
introduction of Fire Codes. And with the introduction with Fire Codes the buildings that we are building and
are renovating are much less likely to have a fire to begin with and much better suppression detection
capabilities as well. So the number of fires we have are less. With that being said, the only way to get that
accomplished is through strong fire prevention. But for Nashua, that’s one of the areas where you are
really struggling because your prevention folks are really overwhelmed now.

As far as the EMS, the reason for Fire Departments responding to EMS calls is because typically they are
going to be within an area and they can get their faster and they can provide that First Responder tier to
someone to help stabilize them for when the ambulance gets there. So | would be a proponent of
continuing to maintain EMS response to emergencies. One of the first slides | showed where there was a
spike in EMS and it went back down, that’s where the Department expanded the EMS calls they were going
to but then reigned it back in because it was just getting to be a little bit much for what they had going.

But in Departments that run no EMS you are still probably only looking at 12%, give or take a little bit and
that’s simply because with the EMS gone all the other components get more representative. But the
number of fires is simply not what they were 10, 15, 30 years ago. Does that answer your question?

Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 14
Alderman Jette

Yes, it does. Thank you very much.

President Wilshire

Does anyone else have any questions for either Mr. McCutcheon or Ms. Harper? Alderman Klee?
Alderman Klee

Thank you Madam President. | guess my question, you probably don’t even have these numbers, but you
mentioned that the Fire Marshall and so on, that only 50% of those that happen after hours we can reach
someone to get out there immediately and that obviously the other 50% we have to wait to at least the next
day or next business day because you said it was a Monday through Friday type of thing. Do we have

numbers to those percentages? So how many of those incidents, the Fire Marshall, needing to get
someone out there, doesn’t happen for a few days?

Ms. Harper

We absolutely do. The 50% number came from the Nashua Fire Marshall's Division and they have a
spread sheet that showed exactly how many calls came in, how many people responded and which calls
had the holdover so that number is readily available from the Fire Marshall's Division. | don’t have it here
with me right now, I’m sorry.

Alderman Klee

From the Fire Marshall’s Division, OK. That’s OK. The reason that | had asked is | guess my question
would be as far as being able to do a proper investigation, | guess we would say, you would probably want

to have that happen as soon as possible and to delay it by a day or a couple days, if it is a weekend thing
could contaminate and hurt the process. Is that correct?

Ms. Harper

You are absolutely correct. And the chain of evidence is a concern as well. You want things to be left
intact to remain the way they were. And to your point, every day or two is going to lessen that and now we
are losing our ability to accurately identify what caused the issue and to get the correct answers out of that
situation.

President Wilshire

Are you all set Alderman Klee?

Alderman Klee

Yes | am.

President Wilshire

Alderman Lopez.

Alderman Lopez

Just two questions | guess, first in relation to other Fire Departments because this kept coming up when we
were talking about the Union contracts. How did you find our compensation level? And in looking at

Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 15

potentially getting additional inspectors, what are your recommendations regarding having other agencies
or other Departments of the City cross trained to support the Fire Department in doing inspections.

Ms. Harper

So it wasn’t specifically a staffing study but as we walk through the process | would tell you that we did not
get complaints about the compensation level. You know there were concerns at the time we were there
because the contract had not been ratified. | think there was an overwhelming feeling that through
contractual bargaining that they were pretty satisfied with the benefits. So | didn’t see that as being an
issue that we see in many places that we go. And when it comes to cross training, there is absolutely an
opportunity to do that to think outside of the box. But you need to be able to manage that. There’s no value
in having people do these inspections if you are not bringing them back into the main system, managing
them, making sure the correct data is getting into the right place and that it is being used widespread. So if
you had the resources and you’ve added somebody to the office that could oversee that program and make
sure it was being done accurately and consistently it would absolutely be one way that you could fix that
situation.

President Wilshire
Chief, did you want to weigh in on this?
Fire Chief Rhodes

Thank you. To Alderman Klee’s point, there’s a lot of these things that by State RSA that we must
investigate, the Fire Marshall’s Office. We must investigate deaths, we must investigate serious injury, we
must investigate carbon monoxide calls. Also, if | may to answer part of Alderman Jette’s question that the
EMS calls, those also encompass motor vehicle accidents which we probably have 5 to 10 of those a day
that we go to. Nashua is a very busy City. Carbon Monoxide calls are in there under hazardous conditions
so there are probably oh my goodness, 50 different codes that we could use in the National Fire Incident
Reporting System but they were broken down into ESCI’s chart into more broader terms.

The whole thing about response time is, so 20 years ago you had 17 minutes to get out of a building.
Today, it is fact, you have about 3 minutes to get out of the building and as witnessed by those poor
individuals last night in New York at that senior living facility. That is something we don’t want to have. We
live in New England, we have a lot of old buildings. Yes we have a lot of retro-fitted buildings. But when
you look at all of the new construction they are putting up in our community now, it is light weight, wood
construction. We are not building the robust ordinary construction which is block and concrete walls. We
are not building timber framed buildings which are our mill buildings along the riverfront that have been
converted to housing units. So it’s looking at the 2% number, it takes a lot of a deeper dive, there’s a lot
more variables that come into play for that.

President Wilshire
Thank you. Alderman Clemons?
Alderman Clemons

Thank you, | appreciate it. So my question is related to | guess response time as well and | noticed that
you kind of, during the presentation you kind of danced around the issue of whether or not we need a new
fire station or not. | guess my question would be does your report say anywhere where in the future we
may need an additional fire station or do you think that with the — or would you recommend rather that we
relocate a couple of them to more strategic locations and that 6 stations could be good for the next, | don’t
know, 20 or 30 years let’s say?

Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 16

Mr. McCutcheon

That’s another good question. We did address that, and so what I'll tell you is right now the coverage is
sufficient to provide the demand that you have. However, over time as you begin to develop more along
the Riverfront, get bigger sub-divisions or multi-level buildings there north of the airport or out in the
southwest that there could be a need. We did an optimization, your stations are pretty well sided today so
probably anything, you know, relocations would be additional stations. So what | would say is that station
location optimization is only one piece of the puzzle. You need land, you need it to be zoned in the right
way and grade and highway access and all that stuff. So there’s several other factors, so what | would
suggest is when you reach a point where you can see your performance beginning to deteriorate or there’s
just an area that you simply can’t service to the same level as the rest of the community, so at that point
evaluate those factors and the other factors you think are important and make the best decision with the
data that you have at the time. Does that answer your question?

Alderman Clemons

It does. You don’t think we are at that point yet where we should be planning ahead for that, based on
where we know the growth of the City is going to go or things like that? Or is that something that should be
purely data driven?

Mr. McCutcheon

| think being data driven helps take a lot of the emotion out of the argument because the data is what the
data is. But at the same time, you’ve got travel time overall that is just slightly above industry standards and
the goal for industry standard. Your turnout performance | think is as much as anything effected by building
design and your stations absolutely need a whole of TLC. And so before for me, if it was my decision,
before | invested $2 to $3 million dollars into a station | would want to make very certain that configuration
was going to meet my needs, that it was in the right location for what we have for our demand today and
that when we invest that money we are going to see it pay off on the back end for that investment.

Alderman Clemons
| appreciate that answer, thank you.
President Wilshire

Alderwoman Kelly?

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you. | was surprised, | was like, “Oh am | next’? My question was around the percentage of people
in our community who are either disabled or speak another language. And | just thought that was sort of
striking and | was wondering if that’s a typical number or if that’s fairly high?

Ms. Harper

It’s actually indicative of what I’ve seen in a number of the communities that we’ve done in the recent
months, about 25% give or take. You are on the higher side of that but | think to us what the bigger issue is
the fact that you have such a significant population of people that don’t speak English but | didn’t see any
evidence of programming to address that. You know, we go to a lot of communities that have that kind of
numbers but they have got multi-language community risk production programs. They’ve got people that
are on the fire departments that speak those languages that are going out into those areas. And| think
that’s really the disconnect in Nashua is that the population has changed, you have got these people that
don’t speak the language and you are not meeting them in their native tongue.

Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 17

Alderwoman Kelly

If | could follow up?
President Wilshire

Yes.

Alderwoman Kelly

So | know there’s a large report to dive into and maybe you answered it in there, but what does a multi-
language program look like. Is that having a person, a translator, is it more translating documents. What
does that look like?

Ms. Harper

It could be all of those. If you dig into the risks and look at it and we have seen communities that hire multi-
lingual people to work in the office. It may be a matter of having somebody in your office work with
somebody on the outside that can translate fire prevention materials into other languages and disseminate
those in a way specific to areas that you know that they are going to be better received in a language other
than English. So it doesn’t have to be one size fits all. It could be a combination of all of those. Videos are
another great way to teach people lessons, you know, delivering them in their first language is always
easier lesson for them to learn than trying to translate it into a language that they predominantly speak.

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you, | really appreciate that.
President Wilshire

Thank you. Alderman Harriott-Gathright.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright

My question was on the staffing and you call it the relief factor. | just wanted to make sure that you were
speaking that they would need like 25 full-time employees? Was that correct.

Mr. McCutcheon

| lost you a little bit on the front end so | just want to make sure | have the question correct. So you are
asking about the 1.25 relief factor and are those numbers correct. So there’s two ways to approach staffing
because people are going to take vacation time, they are going to call out sick and they are going to get
hurt at some point and be out on injury leave. So one option would be that we use overtime to fill all of
those positions and that’s pretty much you are doing now. The other option is that you calculate how much
are you spending in overtime and then you compare that to how much it would cost with salary and fringe
benefit of hiring enough folks to cover what your calculated daily absentee rate is.

And so 25% is kind of in the middle. There are Departments that are closer to maybe 20% and to be honest
with you there are a lot of Departments that are closer to 50%. But what that does is it provides enough
folks out there in the field so you are not constantly hiring overtime or pulling people across districts and
things of that nature. There are already people there in place, but then additionally that frees up folks for
things like better training, more concentration on those items because there’s a few more people in the
system. And either way isn’t necessarily right or wrong, but they are two different approaches that solve
the same problem.

Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 18

Alderman Harriott-Gathright
Thank you.

President Wilshire

Thank you. Alderman Dowd?
Alderman Dowd

Just real quickly and Chief Rhodes, the City does have two pieces of land earmarked for Fire Stations in
the City. The one issue we had was out on Amherst Street with a lot of commercial buildings is the fire
station that addresses that is the airport fire station, correct me if I’m wrong. If, for any reason, there was an
accident on Amherst Street or Sharon Avenue or there was a train across the tracks, you can’t respond.
You’d have to wait for the station from Amherst Street to get up there which would be a delay. But in the
future we do have a parcel of land.

Fire Chief Rhodes
Horton Road.
Alderman Dowd

Horton Road, thank you, which could be earmarked for at least the single engine truck initially that could
respond immediately. But just thought you might want to address that.

Fire Chief Rhodes

Yes, thank you Alderman Dowd. So when you look at the data and just a point of clarification, all of the
data that Stuart and Mary-Ellen are speaking of was from our fire dispatch and from our City GIS ESRY.

So that is all 100% Nashua data, that is not made up. So you bring up the airport fire station, you know,
back in the day, | don’t know | wasn’t around that long. | haven’t been around that long. But urban legend
tells me they put the fire station there because they didn’t know which road was going to build up — Amherst
Street or Broad Street. So you put it in the middle. Well lo and behold. Amherst Street builds up and now
that fire station is kind of on an island. As you alluded to, Alderman Dowd, yes the station who backs them
up is the Amherst Street Station which also covers the north end of the City and in that section of the City
where they showed the population density is. So that creates response time lags to get out there.

The other part, and all of this data is in this report, you can see the travel times, the southwest part of the
City is in the same boat. Right now, it is covered by Engine 6 at the Conant Road Station. But if Engine 6 is
busy, the next vehicle to come is from the Lake Street Fire station or the Spit Brook Road Fire Station. So
now we are getting into those protracted response times of 8 to 10 minutes to get out there. As Stuart
alluded to, this is all data driven. And they are throwing ideas out there for us. But one of the things we
have been talking about for a while is what do we do with the airport fire station and where could we put
that because we can’t just move that airport fire station, although | know it’s your Ward, we can’t move it out
there to Ward 2 and then leave everybody on Ward 1 without fire protection and EMS coverage. So that’s
kind of the dilemma we are in but | think the data that is in this report bears out a lot of answers for us going
forward.

President Wilshire

Are you all set Alderman Dowd?

Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 19

Alderman Dowd
All set.

President Wilshire
Alderman O’Brien?
Alderman O’Brien

Thank you, Madam President. And Chief Rhodes | am glad you mentioned the apparatus location, there is
one thing | didn’t see in the report is the amount of time it takes the cavalry to get there to rescue the first
new engine company and particularly a lot of the areas. When | used to work that was one of my fears like
| used to tell the guys, it could 8 minutes for the cavalry to arrive in some of our location. But my question to
Stuart and Mary-Ellen, Mary-Ellen mentioned to start looking at stations, rehabbing stations and everything
else and consider relocation. And | found that interesting because it seems to be by the City’s Master Plan
we are increasing the density to downtown. And what | mean by the downtown, the companies that
traditionally protect that area are Stations 1, 2 and 4. And so therefore with the call volume as what you
showed on the hot map basically is going to exist for a very long time.

We have built Loft 34, we have taken many other old existing mills and turned them into apartments. We
have new developments down on Harbor Ave; also down by the Riverside and there’s yet to be more to
come, an additional buildings on Sanders Street. So basically those downtown companies, well my thing is,
| would like you to address the needs within the density and those companies may not be able to be
relocated.

Mr. McCutcheon

| think | understand your question. So the effective response force math is where we took, and this is
basically the best case scenarios, everybody is in quarter, everybody is available and we are using ESRY’s
historic road based network to calculate how far we think they can get within 8 minutes and then overlaying
all of those people on top of each other. So then along with that, we look at our call concurrency rates
which are how often are single calls, two calls, three calls or more happening at the same time because
that’s all taking away from that dedication area ERS. And then the final piece would be to use our
utilization as units exceed 10% utilization rates, that means if we are measuring you know 90% of the time
— 10% of the time we are not there, there is very little margin for error and mistakes in other areas,
companies are going to be out of place where they come in.

So | think the way you use that is you look and say, we are building these significant structures what is our
ERF in that area. And let’s say it is on the boundary line of being sufficient. The next thing | would look at
is our call concurrency rate, how often are multiple calls occurring? Are you calling multiple units in and
then what is the unit hour utilization rate and what the helps to dictate to me is are we going to be able to
field sufficient numbers of firefighters? | think as kind of like | said earlier, | think right now you are OK. But
maybe 2 or 3 years from now you won't be. So it is something that we just want to have it on your radar to
monitor and keep track of as growth and development continues to occur.

Alderman O’Brien
Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.
President Wilshire

You're welcome. Alderman Schmidt?

SPECIAL BOARD OF ALDERMEN
MARCH 23, 2021

6:30 p.m.

Meeting is being conducted remotely in accordance with Governor's Emergency Order #12
pursuant to Executive Order 2020-04

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PRESIDENT LORI WILSHIRE CALLS ASSEMBLY TO ORDER
PRAYER OFFERED BY CITY CLERK SUSAN LOVERING

PLEDGE TO THE FLAG LED BY ALDERMAN ERNEST A JETTE

ROLL CALL

PRESENTATION

Master Plan Study for Nashua Fire Rescue

ADJOURNMENT

Nashua Fire Rescue

New Hampshire

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Consulting International

Providing Expertise and Guidance that Enhances Community Safety

Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

Table of Contents

Table of Content 0.0.0... i i i nnn ll iii nnn nnn nln nnn i i iii esee a neeseeaaseeeesaeseeeeseegeneeeeeneees i
Executive SUMMALY ... 0. ln i nn I nH nn nnn In nn nn i ini iii aennneeaeenneeeasaeeeeeesenneneee 1
Background... eee eee cern e citer eee t nee cne teste tee tne eestor ecoesneesneseeesoesseesneseeesnesseseessnesneesieeeresaeeas 1
Summary FIndingS ......... ee eee ee eee eee eee reece tere cne tees coe seeesneseeesneseeesneseesnescesneesiesneesnesneesneteeeeateas 1
Section |. INtrodUction............:ccccceee cece eee ee eee ee ence ee ence ee eee eee ee ee ee ee ee eee eee ee ane sees sees seeeeanaes 4
Acknowledgment ...0..00.c ccc ect cere een tnr eee tnee cnr tnee cnr seeesneeceesnesciesneesoesneesnesseesorsseesneesesnresenats 4
Emergency Services Consulting International Team ...........:ccccceccceceeeceeeereeereeeeeeerecneeeeeeecnresireteteetenas 4
Project Methodology .........:cecceecceeceeeereeeeeeeeeecerecneeeeaeecnrecneeeceeecerecneeseaeecrecneeseeeesarecieeseeeciresiresereenteeas 4
Stakeholder INPut ..........:ccccccceceeeceeeerecereeeeeecereceeeeeeeeeeecereceeeeeerecnreeseeecerecneesseecnresneeseessnresieeeeureenresinees 5
Section II. Community Profile and Risk Identification ............:cccceceeeeeeeeeee cece eeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeaeeeeeeeeanees 6
Nashua, New Hampshire .........ccccecccececeeeceeeeeeeereceeeeeeeecerecaeeeceeeceecneeeeeeecerecieeseeeecarecieeseeesiresieeseneesnteees 6
Nashua Fire RESCUG .......ccccccceccceececnceceeneeecaececaeeeecaeeeceaeeecaeeeeceeeeeaeeeceeeeceeeseaeeescseeeceeesssesesieeecseeesees 7
Community Risk ASS@SSMENE .........eccceecceeceeeeeeeereeeeeeeneeeeeeceeteseseeecereseeeecrecieeseeeecarecireeneeeenresiresseeeeats 10
Community Risk Priorities ........... ee eccececceeceeeeeeeereeeeeeeeeeereceeeeeeeeeeecneeseeeecerecneesneesereciresneeeeiresieesseeeats 38
Section Ill. Evaluation of Fire Department Current Conditions .........cccccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeneeeeeeen 50
Internal Customer ASSCSSMENL.........ceecccececeeeceeneeeceeececeeececeeeeceaeeecaeeeceeeseeaeeeseeeeciseeseeesesieescneeeeas 50
Financial Analysis .....0....ccccccccccccccecececeeeceeceececeeeeeaeeecaececeaeeeceeeescaeeecaeeeceeseceeesceeecieeeseieesesieescneeeeas 53
Management Components ......... eee en ne een retire renee testes eteeeetneeeeneeengs 58
Personnel Management ..........0 eee ee eer titer e entire entire corti e sieges coesneesnetneesnrtnesneteeetneeeette 66
Staffing ooo. nn nnn nent netnr scien enor tne scorns soesneesnrsneesirsnesieseesnreeenee 71
Capital Improvement Programs ...........:ccecceecceeereeeseeeeeeereceeeteeeeceecereceeescrecnresneeeciresireeneeenresieesseeeats 93
Section IV. Analysis of Service Delivery and Performance .........:cccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeneeseneeeees 102
Service Demand AnalySis ..........c:cccecceeceeeeeeeereeereeeerecereceeeeearecnreceeeecirecnresneescnresiresseesenresieeseiresireeneees 102
Population Density and Geographical Demand.............:ccecceeceeeceeeeeeeereeereteeeeeerecereteeeeeeresireseeeenrenss 108
Resource Distrib Ution...........cccceecceeeeceeeeceeeeeecereceeeeeaeeceeeeeeeceecareseaeecresareseaesenreciresseeseiresireteeeeireess 110
Resource Reliability .......... cc cecceecceceeceeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerecneecneeecrecereseeeecrecaresceesearesiresseeeiresieessteenreess 119
Response Performance .........cccceccecereceseeeeeeereceeeeneeeeerecneeceeeeceeceeseeescrecateseaesearesiresneseitecneetseeenrenas 121
Section V. Future System Demand Projections........ccccceeeeeeneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeeeeeeeeeseneneees 133
Population Projections ..........ccccecceecceeeeceeeeceecereceeeeeeeecrecneeeeeeecreceeseeeeerecieetseessireciresseessaresireeneeeeats 135
Service Demand Projections 0.0... cee cece eee ne inet tne tne eene tir eeiesnrecoetniesnetniesneteenneteeneey 136
Section VI. Recommended Future Delivery System Models ........ccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeneeees 137
Short and Mid-Range Deployment Options ............ccccceceeceeeerecereeeeeeeereeneeseeeeetecneeseeeeenrenteeeeeeenteess 137
Long-Range Deployment Options. ..........cecceeceeeceeeeeeeereceeeeeeeeeerecneeceeeecrecireseeeesresireseeeeciresteeeneeeeats 153

ESC) Emergency Services i
Consulting International