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?
