A debate is emerging about the optimum size of the Town of Normal Fire Department and the positioning of fire stations. This comes with a study issued by the union representing firefighters.
Firefighters Local 2442 commissioned a study from the International Association of Firefighters. It suggests the town should keep the fire station at College Avenue and Blair Drive open, even after the new fire station at Shepard and Hershey Roads opens in a month or two. That would cut against the town's long-term plan to close the College Avenue station.
"What we know is that we've got two different narratives that are emerging," Town Council member Kathleen Lorenz said at Monday's council meeting. "Residents are confused. Frankly, so am I."
Union President Chad Pacey said GIS data and a heat map of calls for service show closing the College Avenue station will leave a gap in timely service for central Normal at high-volume times when the headquarters station on Main Street is already out on calls. Union Sergeant at Arms Matt Johann, the union point person on the study, said there are a number of times through the day when all three fire stations are deployed at any given time.
"Any reserve capacity of the system is now being counted towards deploying every day at all times. And when that happens, if a subsequent call comes in, we rely on mutual aid from Bloomington or a surrounding town or surrounding municipality to come in and help," said Johann.
Johann said call volume has more than doubled since 2006 when the town went to its current deployment model. The town said using 2006 as a benchmark may not be the best comparison because that's before Lifeline Mobile Medics went out of service and the town took over paramedic service responses in 2008. The town said calls for service have typically grown 2%-2.5% per year.
There's no argument that calls for service have risen. There is variance on what that means.
"The station moving to Shepard and Hershey is going to represent an overall 9.8% decrease in our overall incident coverage. And what I mean by that is we are governed by an agreed upon standards in the NFPA [National Fire Protection Association] 1710 that we strive to make it on scene from the time we're dispatched within four minutes, 90% of the time," said Pacey.
One parent's perspective
The town said it meets that standard even with the increase in calls. 90%, though, is not 100%. Parent Katie Mathews on Monday urged the town council to keep the College Avenue fire open.
"I watched my daughter seize on the floor of her classroom covered, covered in her own urine for nine minutes before help arrives," said Mathews.
Mathews' daughter Amelia goes to Grove Elementary School on the east side of town. That's closer to the soon-to-open new fire station on Shepard Road than to College Avenue, which could have helped during that incident. Here's where Mathews' story shows call volume may be relevant.
"All three Normal fire stations were called out at the time my daughter started seizing, so Bloomington's fire department had to respond. The emergency medication that my daughter needed to stop seizing was not administered for over 12 minutes," said Mathews.
Fire department records offer more context. Those show a Normal Fire Department engine responded within seven minutes and began treatment. An ambulance from Bloomington did transport the girl to a hospital.
Firefighters argue closing College Avenue rather than adding to the department will increase how often scenarios like the one affecting Katie Mathews' daughter happen.
The town says it has adequate reserve capacity. City Manager Pam Reece says in any given 24-hour period the headquarters station on Main Street is out on a call 5 hours. The other two stations are out 3-4 hours, and 2-3 hours, and the average time spent out on each call is less than 45 minutes, meaning most of the time all three stations are in house and available.
Johann, with the union, said the core of Normal has high population density. It's served by the station on Main Street as well as the station on Raab Road, a station that may be relocated later as part of an ongoing town plan. Johann said the College Avenue station has a distinguishing characteristic: It serves an area in which there are more vulnerable people, those over 65 and under 5.
"They're vulnerable in the sense that they require typically higher demands for emergency medical care, as well as they represent a significant risk and maybe reduced mobility as we age, or ability to detect a fire and get themselves out of danger in an appropriate amount of time," said Johann.
Firefighters suggested the town's 2015 coverage plan needs updating. The town is still working through that plan, and Reece said, at least in a geographic sense, there hasn't been much reason to change it.
"We haven't annexed a significant amount of ground outside our corporate boundaries. We had a lot of subdivisions that hadn't yet built out. They are in the process of building out. We haven't expanded, basically, our footprint as a municipality and our population hasn't grown significantly, at least census to census," said Reece.
The town said it has added paramedic equipment to fire trucks for when ambulances are already committed. It's still realigning fire stations. It will look at a better placement for the Raab Road fire station after the new one opens on Shepard Road and the one on College Avenue closes. And last July, the town and county added computer-aided dispatching, or CAD, to more accurately send the closest available unit to a call.
Reece said that's something that went into effect before the firefighter union study recommended it.
"What that does, based on all of our analysis, all of our CAD information, and our actual going out and driving it in our apparatus, real life, it does evenly distribute the call for service response time in the existing central part of the town that people have been concerned about," said Reece.
Town's response
Reece said there's evidence the town plan won't leave a gap when the College Avenue station closes.
"We actually have proof of concept because we vacated a station in 2017 and that was located at Gregory Street and Adelaide. And it has not hindered our ability to respond effectively," said Reece.
She said town modeling does not indicate there will be a problem with closing the station on College Avenue. And independent insurance ratings include analysis of coverage and response times, and those ratings place Normal in the top 1% in the nation. She said that offers indirect support for the idea town staff knows what it's doing.
"So, all these factors, do we hang our hat on them? No. We're always looking at, again, is there a problem to solve?" said Reece.
Johann says other recommendations in the firefighter study include having 17 firefighters on the scene of a standard residential fire within eight minutes with the first company arriving in four minutes with four people. He said the Normal Fire Department operates on a minimum standard of 15 members on duty at any given time with three firefighters per fire engine showing up to the same incident.
"As the incident goes into either a multi-story dwelling like which you see on campus, as well as industrial like we see on the west side, those numbers continue to grow because the incident complexity and tasks need needing completed in a certain period of time also grow," said Johann.
Hire more personnel?
The study also recommended adding a fourth member to each fire apparatus. Chad Pacey with the union says that would comply with an OSHA requirement that there be two inside and two outside the building.
"We cannot enter into a structure fire and perform interior operations unless we have two members on the outside that are available in the event something should go wrong. There's very limited times when we can break that rule. It's only there's confirmed life hazard inside the home we can break that rule, or if there's a high suspicion of life hazard inside that home," said Pacey.
Pacey said you would need to add three positions daily to meet that standard.
Reece said it's likely more than that because you have to have extra to fill leave and sick time. She said it would be costly and greatly increase the size of the department to fulfill all the recommendations in the report.
"It's taking a department which is currently 63 sworn to a department that's over 100 sworn. We don't need to be bigger than Bloomington. We don't need to have the same number of apparatuses on the street as Peoria," said Reece.
The firefighter union has shared its study with the town administration and with the town council.
Mayor Chris Koos said, "Public safety is probably the highest issue of what we do as a municipality, so we're not going to shirk our responsibilities." He also questioned why the union did not make this a collaborative effort.
"That had no input from the city manager, our fire chief, our finance department, that it was very lopsided in its approach. A plan like that needs everybody at the table to talk about the outcomes, the specifics, what's going to be needed to do that. None of that conversation happened," said Koos.
What political appetite would there be on the council to expand the fire department?
"The numbers that are presented in that study certainly don't have any basis in reality that I can see. But if there is a need to increase, we would certainly look at it," said Koos.
Pacey said Local 2442 has talked at various different times over the years about the growing demand for service and how sustainable the current response model is.
"The union wants what's best for our citizens. I know that, sure, it could be viewed as we're just trying to garner more people to bolster our union numbers, and that wholeheartedly is not the case," said Pacey.
There are some short-term recommendations as well which are less than the full staff increase.
Most calls for service are medical and not fire. Pacey said the union has talked about the need for an additional ambulance with administration over the past several years.
"Our current response model relies on pulling staff from ambulances to staff the ladder truck as needed, depending on the call type. While this provides an additional fire suppression resource when required, it also reduces the number of ambulances available on the street ... We continue to fully support adding another transport ambulance to the daily schedule given the volume of medical calls. Adding a fourth ambulance to the daily schedule would be an excellent first step toward building a more resilient response model for the Town of Normal," said Pacey.
Pacey said firefighters would love the opportunity to sit down and find what they can do in the short term that's realistic for both the town and for them "as the boots on the ground, and then come up with a long-term plan that supports the overall growth and response model of the fire department."
Reece noted staffing levels are an issue for the bargaining table. The town and union signed the latest contract in July.
Pacey said the union remains committed to working collaboratively with the town.
