Chicago Ridge fire station to provide around-the-clock coverage starting Feb. 1

Jan. 19--A long-shuttered Chicago Ridge fire station that reopened with limited hours in spring 2015 will begin operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week beginning Feb. 1, officials said.

Mayor Charles Tokar said the full return of the village's Lombard Avenue station, located at 107th Street and Lombard in the heart of Chicago Ridge's residential district, would improve emergency response times and bring revenue into the village.

"Public safety is my number one priority, and this station opening for 24-hour coverage will enable our combination fire department, which includes career and part-time firefighter/paramedics, to better serve the main population center of our community," Tokar said in a statement.

The Lombard Avenue station, which was built by volunteer firefighters in the 1950s and had "outlived its usefulness," was being used primarily for training and equipment storage until reopening part-time in April 2015 to supplement the department's headquarters on Virginia Avenue in the village's industrial park. That station is open for 24 hours.

Since reopening, the Lombard Avenue station has been staffed 12 hours a day by two or three people who respond to emergencies via ambulance, Fire Chief George Sheets said.

He said it took nearly two years to get the station ready for 24-hour coverage due to a combination of its "total refurbishment" -- adding windows and a fire alarm system that meets code -- and his desire to evaluate how operations at the reopened station were working.

"We wanted to start out slowly -- open up for 12 hours to see how that concept worked," he said. "Now, we're able to open it 24/7, which serves the core population of our community."

Sheets said the ability to deploy an ambulance from the Lombard Avenue station has "worked extremely well," cutting response times by two or more minutes in some cases, which in medical emergencies can be the difference between life and death.

"We're really excited about having this station open because if we got a call in the past over here in this area of the town... the ambulance was coming out of our industrial park," Tokar said. "They would have to cross the Metra tracks at 103rd, and a lot of times the train was there and the ambulance would sit there and wait.

"Or if they were already on a call taking someone to [Palos Community Hospital or Advocate Christ Medical Center] we'd be covered by mutual aid, and an ambulance would come in from Oak Lawn or Alsip or North Palos or even Bridgeview to cover that ambulance call."

Because a patient's insurance provider reimburses the town whose ambulance service makes the hospital transport, Chicago Ridge was losing out on revenue when another municipality picked up emergency calls in the heavily residential southeastern side of town, Tokar explained.

The Lombard Avenue station does not currently provide a fire response and will remain ambulance-only in the short-term, even after going to 24 hours, Sheets said.

The department does, however, plan to begin running a fire suppression apparatus -- it currently has an engine in storage -- out of the Lombard Avenue station within the next year, he said.

Prior to that time, the station's ambulance will be equipped with a Fit-5 fire interruption device -- a relatively new technology that's been compared to a handheld fire suppression grenade that can be tossed into a burning building and act as an extinguishing agent.

Firefighters could deploy the Fit-5, which Sheets stressed is not intended to replace firefighters, to stop the spread of a fire near the Lombard Avenue station until the rest of the department can arrive with more traditional suppression apparatus.

"Just because we don't have a suppression unit out of that station, if there's a fire across the street, it doesn't mean there aren't things we can't do to stop the spread," Sheets said. "We won't be standing there just with our hands twiddling thumbs. We're able to do things on the fireground to help suppress the threat of fire through this new technology."

Sheets said he doesn't anticipate increasing staffing at the Lombard Avenue station, even after the engine is added, and plans to run it as a "jump company," which can respond with either the ambulance or the engine depending on the type and location of the call.

Both he and Tokar credited the firefighters union for agreeing to accept part-time firefighter/paramedics into the department in January 2015, which enabled the village to reopen and operate the Lombard Avenue station with part-time staff.

"I was trying to get it done for years and there were just roadblocks there in terms of manning and personnel," Tokar said of reopening the station. "Fortunately, the relationship that we've built up between myself and Chief Sheets with the full-time fire department personnel, the union, has gotten to the point where we're working in harmony for each other's benefit, and we're really gratified that we've been able to accomplish this."

The department currently employs 13 full-time firefighters, 17 part-timers and 10 paid on-call firefighters, Sheets said.

zkoeske@tribpub.com

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