Plano fire chief says new training facility could help cut down rising response times
Click to enlarge: Chief Sam Greif presented the department's response times to the Plano City Council last week. (Plano Fire-Rescue)
By Julie Fancher
12:48 PM on May 18, 2016 CDT
PLANO -- The fire chief says the city needs up to $22 million in upgrades for a fire training facility to cut growing response times caused by ever-increasing calls.
"Our response times are getting higher," Plano Fire-Rescue Chief Sam Greif said. "We are going in the wrong direction, quite frankly."
At a City Council meeting last week, Greif said the new training facility could help drive those times down because firefighters would no longer need to travel out of the city limits to train.
"You can quickly recall your resources and get them back into service," he said.
Firefighters used to travel to a training facility at Collin College in McKinney, Greif said, but that facility closed in 2014 and is not expected to reopen for a few years.
The department now uses a training facility in Richardson, which Greif said is no longer up to par for Plano's growing department.
It also doesn't meet some insurance standards, a traditional method used to decide how to allocate resources, because it doesn't give firefighters the opportunity for live-fire training exercises.
"Richardson is the only thing we have, and it simply doesn't meet our needs," Greif said. "Our call times and response times are continuing to increase, and that is not likely to change again with the trend this year. If we can't keep our resources close … it's only going to make matters worse."
In the last decade, the call volume in the city of about 275,000 has increased about 42 percent. Calls increased by 10 percent from 2014 to 2015 where the department had about 25,000 calls. Greif said in the first quarter of 2016, calls are "significantly" ahead of where the department was in the first quarter of last year.
Fire response times increased by 17 seconds between 2014 and 2015, and Greif said that time is up an additional 3 seconds in the first quarter of this year. The average response time for EMS calls also increased by almost 30 seconds from 2014 to 2015, city records show.
He attributed the rising response times to the increase in calls.
"The more you have a high-risk, low-frequency event, the more you need to train," he said. "We don't have disasters every day, but when you do, you better have practiced for them."
The chief's proposal calls for an upgrade to a small facility at Plano's Fire Station 1 at 1901 K Avenue. The potential $22 million project would include a two-story fire station, a two-story training and administration building and a six-story training tower.
"We already train at this site," the chief said. "It's not something that would be new to the neighborhood."
The city already has about $5 million in bond money allocated for fire station renovations that could be put toward this new facility.
City Manager Bruce Glasscock said if the council decides to move forward, the city would probably hold a bond election next May. If passed, construction would be likely to start in 2018.
"It has gotten to the point for us where the training and safety of our fire personnel is critical," he said. "For an agency and city this size, that we are having to depend on other facilities to get our training in, that is not the level of excellence we set for ourselves."
Mayor Harry LaRosiliere said he thought a new facility fell in line with the city's new Plano 3.0 identity.
"When we were sharing and using other facilities, that was Plano 1.0 and 2.0, and Plano 3.0, we are our own city" he said. "We are ready to have our fire department be in their own facility to be the best they can be."
Julie Fancher
jfancher@dallasnews.com @juliefancher
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