Va. County Adds EMS Staff

May 20--PRINCE GEORGE -- The emergency response world has changed. Firefighters and medics must respond to incidents quicker. Insurance companies raise premiums unless fire stations are situated closer to homes. Volunteers must receive more training and dedicate more hours before they are able to respond.

Budgets are tight. The county is growing. And longer response times have, at times, resulted in deaths, causing a contingent in the county to clamor for change.

In the past year, much change has come.

Prince George first answered the calls for reform in October 2012 by adding resources.

Within months of the first complaints about lengthy response times, the Board of Supervisors granted a request from James B. Owens, director of Fire and EMS, to place a full-time, paid EMS employee in the Jefferson Park Fire Station during the peak hours of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The change did not add a position and did not cost the county any money.

But it did decrease average response times for that station by 7 minutes, a report by Owens said.

Response times for critical calls at the Jefferson Park station averaged 8 minutes, according to a report Owens wrote in January. At other stations during the same time, the average response times to critical calls averaged 15 minutes, according to the report.

The success of that addition prompted Owens to ask supervisors for $664,000 to add nine additional positions to his staff of seven professional firefighter-medics.

"The calls for service that were being generated in the county, the ability for us to adequately cover those calls was not where it needed to be, and ... to fix that problem, this is what we need, knowing that we did not have the funding to do that," Owens said.

The county met Owens partway and raised the real estate tax 2 cents. One penny of that increase went toward three additional medic positions. Another penny of the real estate tax increase funds the continuous replacement of public safety equipment.

A grant recently acquired by the Fire and EMS department allowed Owen's original request for nine career firefighter-medics to be met.

The $650,000 grant will allow Fire and EMS to hire six firefighter-medics for two years. The county is obligated to fund the hires for the third year. Owens is confident the growth in the county will support the new hires after the grant funding runs out.

He also expects the additional hires to reduce response times.

The additional resources have been put toward the Carson substation and Jefferson Park station, where Fire and EMS incidents are most concentrated.

The three firefighter-medic positions are now filled and staff an ambulance during the peak hours at the Carson substation. The six grant-funded firefighter-medics will also add staffing to the Jefferson Park station and Carson substation.

Another staffing transition on the horizon is how volunteers respond to calls.

Owens plans to increase response efficiency by shifting the county's current rural-based paging system to a system based on shifts. That guarantees that a unit will be able to respond to a call most of the time, Owens said.

Insurance companies are the driving force behind another change for Prince George Fire and EMS.

Before, insurance companies determined homeowner insurance rates by the nearness of fire hydrants and fire stations, as well as the department's insurance ratings. This past year, Prince George improved its overall rating by changing procedures for record-keeping and communication, as well as flushing water lines.

But the improved county ratings became useless once insurance companies adopted new standards based on a 2007 nationwide report. That report said that any home outside of a 5-mile radius should be classified at high risk.

"That report was based on a study of counties and cities across the United States, and it is based on one type of call out of many that we do, a house call," Owens said.

Now, regardless of the distance of fire hydrants and the county's fire and EMS insurance ratings, any residence beyond 5 miles of a fire station is placed at the top of the risk scale.

That has caused thousands of homeowners in Prince George to see their insurance premiums increase by an estimated 100 percent to 125 percent. Owens' own insurance went up by about $600.

The increase has been especially felt in growing subdivision areas along state Route 10.

"Some in River's Edge have actually been refused fire coverage because of that situation," said Del Williams, who lives more than 5 miles away from both the Burrowsville and Prince George fire stations.

Gabrielle Heath, who lives in River's Edge, said the situation has created a catch-22 for homeowners who may be forced to sell their homes because of the climbing premiums, but are unable to find buyers because of the premiums.

The change has forced Prince George to go back to the drawing board.

Last year, County Administrator Percy Ashcraft directed the formation of a committee charged with identifying future Fire and EMS station locations in the county.

The January report from the committee pinpointed four areas where "a Fire and EMS station would benefit the area." Those four areas were the Route 10, James River Drive corridor; New Bohemia; the Route 35 area at Templeton Road; and the Puddledock Road corridor.

A station in New Bohemia would have the most impact. According to the report, 2,383 addresses could benefit from a quicker response time and 127 addresses would potentially see lower insurance premiums.

The county's ownership of a 17-acre parcel in the area could accept a new station, the report said.

An estimated 1,551 homes are beyond the 5-mile radius in the Route 10 corridor and a total of 1,917 addresses would benefit from a new station, the report states. Response times range from 12 minutes to 16 minutes on average in that area, the report said.

In the southern end of the county along Route 35 and Templeton Road, a station would impact approximately 1,459 citizens and improve insurance ratings for an estimated 600 addresses. The county would have to acquire 3- to 5-acres of land for this station.

Abnormal growth in the Puddledock area prompted the committee to recommend a station there. A housing complex of 150 to 175 units, a community center and a club house are under construction on Fine Street and Puddledock Road. In addition, multiple medical offices have cropped up along the road. An estimated 15 to 25 EMS calls per week are anticipated to come from the area, the report said.

"That is a huge increase just in that small area," Owens said of the development around Puddledock Road.

Proffers from anticipated development would help the county fund a potential Route 10 station and Puddledock station.

Right now, the proposed capital improvement plan, a 10-year schedule of projects for the county, has slated $3.9 million in debt issuance in fiscal year 2018 for a new fire station.

The investment would ultimately save taxpayers money after their insurance premiums drop with a new station, Owens said.

"Not only am I getting a fire station to reduce my homeowners insurance, I am getting a fire station that will be able to provide service to me quicker," Owens said.

Owens said that adjustments in staff would have to be made to make sure responders are able to staff any new station.

A new station is likely years down the road. But another change -- centralizing the Fire and EMS administration -- may be only months away.

To rectify inconsistencies in policy among volunteer companies, Ashcraft outlined a proposed system to the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 11 that would require volunteer chiefs to report to the director of Fire and EMS, who is appointed by the county administrator.

The director, Owens, would be responsible for making policy and daily decisions for the department.

Instead of making policy, the volunteer chiefs would advise the director on policy decisions. A Fire and EMS board consisting of the director and the volunteer chiefs would replace a chief's committee that currently governs volunteer operations. Owens would serve as the board's chairman.

Currently, each station operates by its own set of bylaws and standard operating procedures.

That has led to inconsistencies in discipline and the inability to move apparatus between stations, Ashcraft said Feb. 11. The ability to move apparatus could lengthen the life of the public safety equipment.

"There are issues of discipline and misconduct that are handled sometimes and sometimes they are not. It creates conflict between stations," Ashcraft said Feb. 11.

There is also little to no oversight in the allocation of funds given to each station and no consequences if mandatory training is not accomplished, he added.

The proposal received mixed feedback from the volunteer chiefs.

Carson volunteer chief Scott Campbell and Jefferson Park volunteer chief Jason Coker both said the proposal was a step in the right direction. Coker added the proposal was spurred by discipline issues described by Ashcraft in his report.

"There is going to be some growing pains, but this is just something that is going to happen. I prefer to work with the county on this," Coker said.

For Prince George Emergency Crew chief Norman MacArthur, the move seems to cut the legs out beneath the volunteer chiefs.

"In my opinion I don't think that this proposal comes at the right time for PGEC (Prince George Emergency Crew) or Prince George in general. I feel that the established 'chief's committee' has been an effective way to deal with issues beyond the station or company level and at the management level," MacArthur said in a statement.

Supervisors have received written feedback from the chiefs and are expected to take up the issue again in upcoming board meetings.

If the system is adopted, it would be the most recent of major shifts in the Fire and EMS department in just over a year.

"We are going through the same growth challenges that every other rural county in America is having," Owens said.

Copyright 2014 - The Progress-Index, Petersburg, Va.