Staffing fire station improves response

WASILLA — A call went out for firefighters to put out a chimney fire on Pirate Circle late Monday night. Unlike most evenings, there were firefighters ready and waiting to go.

In the Valley, where fire departments work on either a paid on-call basis or as a purely volunteer force, the usual set-up has firefighters at home hearing the page then driving to the fire station to roll tankers and engines out to the call.

But as Monday turned into Tuesday, at the Central Mat-Su Fire Department’s station 6-1 in downtown Wasilla, there were firefighters already at the station.

Assistant Chief Michael Keenan said it’s part of a new program the department started in October. Every night, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. at least four firefighters spend the night in the station’s area commonly referred to as “the dorms,” waiting for their pagers to go off.

“The intent is to cover that time of the night when a lot of folks aren’t available to respond because they have to get up for work,” Keenan said.

The hours are also nice because a firefighter who leaves the station at 6 a.m. can generally make it to his day job on time.

So far, Keenan said, it’s worked out well. Especially on the Pirate Circle fire, the speed of the response impressed him.

“Normally I would have gotten there first and had to wait anywhere from another six to 10 minutes before the engine is there,” Keenan said.

With crews staffed and ready, he was still the first on scene but, “I’m having to go faster on my size-up because the engine is right behind me.”

Lower response time, he said, means the department is able to save more buildings. Monday night’s fire was a prime example. The fire in the chimney had moved into the attic. But when the fire was out, he said, two roof trusses had burned, but the house was otherwise intact.

“The potential there was to burn the whole top of that house off,” Keenan said.

Staffing up before there’s a fire to go to isn’t exactly a new concept. On days with heavy snow or high winds or on holidays expected to generate traffic accidents, Keenan said, Central will usually call in stand-by crews.

But having crews there all night every night is something the department hasn’t done before

Keenan came up with the plan during his tenure as acting chief – March 2007 to March 2008 - and ended with the hiring of current chief James Steele, Keenan said. During that time he budgeted in the money to pay firefighters for their shifts.

Growth in the Valley, Keenan said, is something the department keeps an eye on. The department has seen activity grow along with the population. But, Keenan said, the move for overnight staffing was spurned more by a desire to generally improve the department’s service to the public.

“We’re always looking for places to improve. This community has a very good fire department and one of the places we felt we need to improve was response time,” he said. “The concern was, ‘Did we have enough personnel to support the system?’”

So far that concern has proved unwarranted, he said. There has been no problem filling the shifts. To sign up, folks have to agree to take two shifts in a month. But, he said, they get something in return.

“It’s an extra 24 hours out of their lives that we’re asking them for,” Keenan said, but it, “gives them an opportunity to get first in on some of these fires that they normally wouldn’t.”

And the crews, he said, are keeping relatively busy with fire calls but also with helping out the ambulance crews.

“It’s also for those little calls that we get in the middle of the night that nobody wants to get up for,” Keenan said – carbon monoxide detectors going off or smoke alarms sounding with no fire.

Even dorm life seems to have caused few, if any, problems. Some nights, between ambulance crews and the firefighters, they’ve had to find additional beds, Keenan said.

“So far it hasn’t been an issue,” he said. “Except for the guys that snore.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.