Bottom Line: Council Budgeted for Consultants, but never Budgeted for a Fire Station.
By: Libi Uremovic | Original Article at patch.com
1:48 CALFire Chief Smith: Data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that Beaumont’s populations in 2005 was 19,959 people. It is now slightly over 40,000 which constitutes an increase of over 100%. Fire and Emergency services have not expanded to meet the increased demands placed upon it. As a result; response times have increased.
In 2006, the earliest data query that I could rely on, indicated that Beaumont Fire Fighters responded to 2,112 calls for service and our average response time at that point was 3.6 minutes; well under the Four (4) minutes recognized as the National Standard of the NFP, the National Fire Protection Association.
1:49 Smith: Fire Fighters arrived within five (5) minutes to 80.3% of those total number of responses. However 193 calls were answered between 5 – 10 minutes That would indicate that as far back as 2006 we were lagging in our ability to respond expediently to every incident in the City. In 2014 Beaumont Fire Fighters responded 3,029 calls for service, a 30% increase. The average response time rose to 3.8 minutes. Fire Fighters arrived within 5 minutes to 79.4% of those incidents, a decrease from 8 years prior. 496 calls for service were answered between 5-10 minutes, an increase of 59%.
150:00 Smith: You would suspect that if our call volume had increased 30% then our call volume between that 5-10 minute window would also increase by roughly 30%, but instead it was double. What that means is that the expansion in our City is primarily in the southern portion and the southwest portion of the City, which are outside the reach of our current capacity to respond.
151:00 Smith: Last year Calimesa responded into the City of Beaumont 100 times. 87% of our total call volume are for EMS calls and Calimesa’s engine company does not have paramedics.
156:00 Smith: Calimesa’s Engine Company is the only engine company in the Riverside County fire department system of nearly 100 fire stations that’s staffed with only two people and neither of those 2 people are paramedics. So whey they do respond into Beaumont they’re providing an inferior level of service relative to what Engine #66 provides, or could provide.
2:30 Urtiaga: I am aware of a conversation between a Developer and the City of Calimesa offering land on the Southwest side of the 10 fwy, off Cherry Valley Blvd. There is a parcel that has the infrastructure already in; water, electricity. It’s ready to go, it’s been offered. It’s just now waiting for Calimesa to move that station.
207:00 Smith: Calimesa is entertaining two developer agreements; one that’s pledged property for a fire station and the other pledged construction of that station. Wherever they agree to build that station, provided that it’s east of their City proper, then it will provide service to western Beaumont. If they do construct that station on the south side of the 10 fwy, obviously that would ease your concerns, but if it goes to the northern portion of the 10 fwy, they would still have to access Calimesa Blvd to Cherry Valley Blvd.
209:00 Smith: This is part of a larger process that may take a number of years to solve. And that involves construction of additional facilities and relocation of existing facilities. I do have some traction right now from the County to relocate the Cherry Valley fire station closer to Beaumont, which will also help to ease response times, specifically to Stetson and Solera.
2;20 Knight: How many fire stations do we have in the City of Beaumont.
Smith: There’s currently one (1) funded by the City. Beaumont participates in an agreement with Banning and the County to fund 1/3 of the personnel of Engine #20 of the Banning Fire Station. You could say that you pay for 1 1/3 fire stations.