THE DALLES — Mid-Columbia Fire & Rescue (MCFR) is several years into researching whether, and where, to build a third fire station, with a goal of improving response times to a densely populated central section of The Dalles.
The gold standard for fire response is getting to a fire within four minutes, 90% of the time, said MCFR Chief David Jensen. Large swaths of land around both the MCFR main station, at Eighth and Webber on the west side of town, and around its smaller community station in Columbia View Heights, on the east side, meet that standard.
Almost all of the downtown area falls within the four-minute response times of both stations as well.
But there is a gap in the middle of The Dalles where that goal is not met. “It includes the hospital, the middle school, Dry Hollow Elementary, The Dalles Readiness Center, and Columbia Gorge Community College,” Jensen said.
It is also a densely populated residential area.
“It’s not a very wide section but it includes some important, high value properties to our area and the quicker we get apparatus on scene the smaller you can keep the fire, the less damage,” Jensen said.
The MCFR board put in its strategic plan two years ago that it wanted to research the need for, and best location of, a third fire station, Jensen said. He was tasked with the work and has gathered four years of data on response times to calls throughout the district.
He hopes to make a presentation to the board on his findings possibly in April.
As for possible locations, Jensen has looked at an available property inventory that the city maintains. He’s spotted some potential locations, but has not talked to any property owners yet.
“Building a station is going to take some time to get funding, but securing a piece of land could happen sooner rather than later just to hold it, so somebody doesn’t develop on it,” he said.
There is no time estimate for when a new station would be built, he said.
It would be a small community station, similar to the three-bay station in Columbia View Heights. The main station is much larger, at 14 apparatus bays.
The smaller station handled just over 1,000 calls in 2023. The larger handled 2,840.
Of the 20,728 people in the fire district, the two fire stations cover 9,395 people within the four-minute travel time. Adding a third station would increase this to about 15,900 covered within the four-minute standard, Jensen said.
“Having community fire stations is one of those things you balance with neighborhoods as well. There’s definitely a decorum that you don’t want to be waking people up all night, but on the other hand they’ve got to get to where they’re going as quickly as they can and as safely as they can,” Jensen said.
For decades, there was a fire station at The Dalles City Hall. This station closed in 1998 after the new main fire station was built at Eighth and Webber. The Dalles Fire Department and Wasco Rural Fire District merged in 1995, necessitating the move from City Hall.
Jensen noted that years ago there was also a fire station on 11th and Kelly, now the site of a veterinarian’s office.
The four-minute goal is aimed at containing a fire “to a single room, and that you’re there in time to save lives,” Jensen said.
Every second is counted in fire response, from how long it takes 911 dispatchers to answer a call (goal: 15 seconds), to how quickly crews are dispatched (goal: 64 seconds), to how long crews take to get into their vehicles and underway (goal: 80 seconds), to the travel time to the fire (goal: 240 seconds), Jensen said.
The longest part of that sequence is the travel time, “and that’s why station distribution is so important ... We want to put them closer to incidents,” he said.
“We know if we don’t get there within six minutes, the chances are a fire is not going to be contained within a room, and if it’s not contained within a room, the chances of someone getting hurt or killed go up dramatically,” he said.
Jensen is using a computer program that calculates estimated drive times specifically for emergency apparatus, even down to what time of day they travel, and how many stop signs and stop lights they encounter on their way to various points throughout the city.
He then compares those data model estimates to the real travel times on actual calls for the last four years. The program looks at the actual time it took, and displays red areas where the four-minute travel goal was not met.
“We’ve got a big gap that’s outside our response time and it includes a lot of our critical infrastructure,” Jensen said.
This central area of the city is also “the back door” to get to the rural areas outside the city, via Dry Hollow Road, Jensen said.
Staffing would not necessarily increase if a third community fire station came online, Jensen said. Right now, MCFR does not have the personnel to staff three stations. However, if all open positions were filled and all personnel were trained to the needed level, MCFR could staff three locations, he said.
MCFR has to do hiring and promotions before that can happen, but the goal is to have those two tasks accomplished by July, he said.
With enough promotions to allow for an officer on each type of apparatus, MCFR could switch to a different personnel setup that would resemble a three-station response, even though it does not yet have the third station. MCFR would just run the third piece of apparatus out of one of the other stations, Jensen said. Future plans for hiring two more firefighters per shift, would make the new deployment model ideal and we have a path for that in the future.
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