BOISE, Idaho — This story originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
In an end-of-year update, the Boise Fire Department came before city council Tuesday to discuss priorities for the public safety agency.
The department is currently pursuing higher staffing for its existing fire engines. An additional firefighter in the department's three-person crews would align with national standards of four-person crews across a department's fire engines. To elaborate on the cascading effects of these staffing levels, Boise Fire Chief Mark Niemeyer discussed the current landscape for the department's fire response.
Structural fires initially have 15 fire personnel on the scene, with a chief officer, safety officer, a four-person ladder truck and three three-person fire engines present. In cases where a three-person engine is the first on the scene, however, they will have to wait for additional firefighters to arrive before they are able to enter the structure in order to be in compliance with safety standards, Niemeyer said.
“The reason that’s important is that if we have two firefighters go inside a burning building, we definitely want at least two people outside that burning building to go in and effect a rescue if our firefighters get in trouble,” Niemeyer said.
With a four-person engine, the department would more easily comply with the "two-in-two-out" standard and could get to work immediately, Niemeyer said.
The impacts of these staffing changes could also be felt in EMS calls. In cases where the department is responding to an incident of cardiac arrest, a four-person crew would be able to better delineate assignments and comply with CPR standards, which have been changed to have CPR provided for two minutes before rotating to another individual. In some cases, CPR can be administered for as long as a half-hour, Niemeyer said.
“Having that additional body, on a cardiac arrest call for example, an EMS call that’s critical ... I can tell you anecdotally it’s worth it,” Niemeyer said, citing his prior experience as a medic.
An additional benefit of achieving this four-person crew is receiving a Class 1 rating — the best rating on a scale of 1-10 — from the Idaho Surveying and Rating Bureau (ISRB). If achieved, this classification would make the Boise Fire Department the first in Idaho to earn the rating, bringing positive downstream effects on property insurance premiums, Niemeyer said.
Currently, the Boise Fire Department receives a Class 2 rating.
“Class 1 will have an effect on premiums, a little on the residential side, but more so on the commercial side and our commercial insurance premiums,” Niemeyer said.
According to ISRB, the primary factors that would move the department from its present Class 2 rating to Class 1 are the addition of a ladder truck in south Boise as well as additional crew members across the department, Niemeyer said.
At present, 11 of the department's stations are in need of additional staffing, amounting to a total of 33 more firefighters. Each fire engine moved from three-person to four-person will have an added cost, shifting from $1.8 million to $2.3 million per engine in order to cover wages, benefits and firefighting equipment. The department would be looking to transition stations to four-person engine crews over time, resources permitting, Niemeyer said.
Funding provided through FEMA’s Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant presents a potential funding opportunity to help meet desired staffing levels. If accepted, the grant would cover three years of the costs for a number of firefighters including salaries, benefits, training costs and initial equipment costs, Niemeyer said
VALLEY FIRE UPDATE
The Valley Fire — which burned nearly 10,000 acres about a mile east of Boise in October — was also a focus of discussion in the Tuesday meeting. The fire saw a multi-agency response with Boise Fire Department, Boise Police Department and the Department of Emergency Preparedness deploying a total of 100 public safety personnel and preventing any homes from being lost, according to Brad Brolin, Boise Fire Department’s emergency services assistant chief.
“The work that was done that day and the couple of days during the fire was really impressive,” Mayor Lauren McLean said. “The collaboration, the coordination, the alerting and communication with the public was really appreciated by everybody.”
Due to the fire's significant acreage, there are ongoing concerns about the potential weather impacts for the burned-out areas, with vegetation loss opening up the potential for future erosion, flooding and debris flows, Brolin said.
Re-vegetation efforts, spearheaded by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Bureau of Land Management, are currently underway. Also, a collaboration with the National Weather Service (NWS) will bring flood watch and flood warnings, with localized weather reporting stations to set up in burn areas.
“Once we have all the information in terms of what the identified risk is, we intend to give all the residents that information to include how to register for the National Weather Service’s flood watch and flood warnings,” Brolin said.
A burn site examination of modeled risks in the area is expected to arrive in February with further communication to come from Ridge to Rivers — which manages trails throughout the Boise Foothills — regarding needed trail closures to avoid erosion in the spring, Brolin said.
“I know that residents … are anxious in a good way to see us advance through this restoration work to make sure that all of our neighborhoods stay safe," McLean said.
