Committee on Infrastructure — 12/08/2021 Page 16
Chairman O'
Yes, | will call them. Thank you, Mr. Jette.
Aide Jette
Okay.
Chainnan O'Brien
As a matter of fact, | probably should probably do it now. The thing is Chief Rnades do you want to come forward? Also
too do we have a Deputy Chief Rourke here? You might as well come up. Welcome to the hot seat. I've always liked this
when police and fire can sit together. Welcome, gentlemen. Chief Rhodes and so members of the committee know, | did
make phone communications with several people. We did hear testimony which kind of | find concerning and it has to do
with public safety. Not here this evening, | did speak to the head of AMR Ambulance - Chris Stawasz. He does have an
opinion on the barriers but | says | want to have your answer as far as is It affecting the quality or safety of the community.
According to AMR what he tells me, | know his third party testimony from me but I'm sure if inquired we could get that
written from Mr. Stawasz but he did state that he received no official complaint on the thing. I'm sure if we had received
official complaint, and | assure the citizens of this community that if we received an official complaint, | as Chairman of this
board would act accordingly. But we have never received from any of our authority people that are in that capacity never
really complained to us on the effect of the traffic situation in the city. So therefore on that segway, Chief Rhodes.
Brian Rhodes, Fire Chief
Good evening. For the record my name is Brian Rhodes. | have the privilege of serving as the 14th Chief for the Fire
Department of the City of Nashua. Nashua Fire Rescue has never and will never, I'm pretty confident to say although we
can always say always or never, like any type of reductions in traffic flow on Main Street. We were a big proponent of the
stroll - when we had the stroll. For years, we did nothing to protect the what 30 plus 1,000 people that came there. We
lobbied very hard to get hard barriers put up.
in this case, | think if we're putting people in the streets, yes we have to protect those people. Things happen. I've always
said yeah, this is Nashua and knock on wood we're a pretty safe city here but | think that's for a reason because | think we
plan well. We have an extremely professional and competent Police Department. | couldn't be prouder of our Fire
Department and that's because the community supports us. At this point it’s kind of tough for us to speak against or speak
for the businesses of Main Street because we technically work for you. We are public servants. So all we can really speak
to is you pay me to be the head fire official - Fire Rescue in the City of Nashua and you pay now Acting Chief Rourke to be
the head police official. So we can give you our best advice. We can give you industry standards, best practice. | can give
you data. Part of what! can give you is we just and every member of the board was given a copy of the Master Plan that
was just completed that the full Board approved for Nashua Fire Rescue. For those in the audience who don't have this, it
speaks about population density. All this information was taken from the city’s GIS website. So this is all Nashua specific
information.
Nashua is a densely populated city with 2,893 residents per square mile. For the sake of comparison, the population
density of New Hampshire is 152 residents per square mile and the population density nationally is 91 residents per square
mile. The most densely populated areas of Nashua with more than 10,000 residents per square mile are in the eastem part
of the city in the neighborhoods surrounding fire stations one, two and four. !t also goes on to say there's a pocket in the
south end of the city. So fire stations one, two, and four are the Amherst Street Station, the Lake Street Station, and the
East Hollis Street Station. So if you triangulate that, that's kind of the area we're talking about. When this study was
undertaken, and in full disclosure the initial number here was for the entire city. The response time in the 90th percentile
from 2017 to 2019 was 6 minutes and 47 seconds. | had our staff run numbers for us from April 1% of this year 2021 to
October 31” of this year. For the stations one, two, and four which | just mentioned are in the most densely populated
portion of our city, we have increased our response time by 1 minute and 8 seconds. Now that might not seem like a major
number but it is an increase.
My concern as the head of the Fire Department is we are undertaking some pretty significant growth in this densely
populated area. Moynahan Manor, School Street flats, performing arts center. One incident on Main Street where | have
to take one fire hose off a fire engine but we need to set up an aerial truck, we are shutting down Main Street completely.
There's nothing | can do about that. That is going to create a mess. Anytime we go down there we create a problem. The
trucks are big. What are we going to do?
As far as the traffic goes, we have traffic preemption. And for those who don't understand or know what that is, is if you if
you see a fire truck on the roads fights and sirens on but if you notice on the mast arms where the signal lights are if the if
