Hutch Fire goal to be among the best in the world

Feb. 10—The Hutchinson Fire Department experienced a 34% drop in fire calls over the past two years and also reduced its response time on the calls it made.

The average response time to get all units on scene, however, still exceeded the national standard by more than a minute.

Two changes that are in the works — an automated dispatching aid and the relocation of the city's Main Street fire station — should help address that element that is so critical in fire response, fire officials advised the Hutchinson City Council last week.

Both, however, are budgeted for 2022.

While the number of fire calls has declined, medical calls continue to rise and account for more than 60% of the department's responses.

A couple of changes under Fire Chief Steven Beer have significantly reduced the number of calls made with lights and sirens, although overall call volume continues up.

Meanwhile, the department is scheduled for an outside audit by fire officials from North Carolina in March, a final step in pursuing international accreditation.

Among the world's best?

They expect to learn by July, Beer said, whether the department has earned the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI) issued by the Center for Public Safety Excellence.

If so, the department would become one of only 40 fire departments worldwide with both international accreditation and an ISO (Insurance Services Office) rating of 1, the best insurance rating possible, which it garnered in 2019, Beer said.

"When I came here four years ago next month, we were a good organization, but not a great organization," Beer said. "To be a great organization, we had to do a lot of changes internally and everyone, from me on down, stepped up. What we've accomplished is off the charts. It will put Hutchinson Fire on the map, in Kansas and the U.S., forever."

Over the past year, department staff conducted risk assessments on some 2,500 commercial structures in town, clearly laying out what hazards there are for each and putting them on a grid to use in case of a tornado or other storm damage.

The department also completed color-coding some 2,700 fire hydrants, Beer said, with less than 100 "not meeting the highest standard blue color-code."

"We have a great water supply in Hutchinson, and that is a testament to the water department and public works department, which helped us get our ISO rating," he said.

Beer also praised the ability of fire department management and union representatives to work together, "all pulling the rope in the same direction."

Fire call data

A software upgrade in 2019 is allowed the department to better record and analyze response data, said Doug Hanen, chief of operations.

There were 176 fire calls during 2020 — including 48 structure fires — which accounted for just 3.1% of calls the department responded to. That was down from 3.8% in 2019 and more than 5% of calls in 2018.

For three of the previous four years — 2017 was an anomaly due to the number of homes destroyed in May wildfires — the city averaged 63 structure fire calls per year.

Beer attributed the nearly 27% drop in structure fires last year to aggressive investigation and prosecution of arson cases, which he said accounted for more than half the fires that were occurring when he first arrived in Hutchinson.

"We shifted investigators around and met with detectives in the PD," Beer said. "We've got a great relationship with the fire marshal and the detectives' office."

EMS calls

Over the past five years, the department has seen a nearly 25% increase in overall call volume, with an 8% jump just last year, to almost 5,600 calls.

The vast majority of that increase was from medical calls.

Behind fire suppression, public surveys during a strategic planning process showed EMS calls as second most important to the community, Hanen said.

"We've been working with EMS to cut out the low acuity calls, so we don't go on all sick calls," Hanen said. "We have a system where dispatchers ask questions and they rate the calls A, B, C or D. Alpha response (the A's) are low acuity and we stopped going on those. That reduced our call volume by about 600. Only about six of those calls with EMS actually went above Alpha response, so what 911 is asking is pertinent. It helps root out those nonemergency calls we were going on."

The department still ran on 3,247 EMS calls last year and fire trucks arrived on the scene, on average, seven minutes ahead of the ambulance, which usually has a longer distance to travel.

On the other hand, Hanen explained, the department has increased the number of "service calls" it is responding to, which are also nonemergency calls that don't require an ambulance, such as someone who needs help getting into bed or out of a chair.

Also up are "good intent calls," which might be dispatched, for example, as someone who had a fall, but while en route they determine the fall occurred two days earlier and doesn't require an emergency response.

Both service calls, which topped 850 last year, and good intent calls, which reached 835, were up more than 46% from the previous year.

Wednesdays are the busiest day of the week for responses, followed by Saturdays. Sundays are the lowest. Calls generally start "ramping up at 5 a.m. for the day," Hanen said, with late afternoon into the evening the busiest hours.

Fire response

During 2020, firefighters were credited with saving 91% of property for calls they responded on, or more than $12 million worth. Fire losses in the city in 2020 totaled just over $1.174 million.

By district, Fire Station 3, which covers Sixth Street south to the southern city limits and includes downtown, accounted for 22.5% of all runs, with 1,257. That was followed closely by Station 1 on North Main, which had 21.9%. Station 1 covers a smaller area, but it's denser, Hanen said.

Station 4, covering the southeastern quadrant of the city, was third at 11,063 calls, or 19%

"We take and grade every type of call we go on, by how many people it will take to mitigate the incident," Hanen said. "We send 16 people on structure fires, with four or five units."

They measure the ERF time, which is how long it takes to get an "effective response force" on the scene, such as all 16 firefighters for a structure fire.

"Nationwide, the standard is to have them on scene in eight minutes for a moderate fire," Hanen said. "Ninety percent of the time, we're on the scene in 9.53 (minutes)."

New station

By relocating Fire Station No. 1 from 20th Avenue and Main to 23rd Avenue — from the southern end of the Kansas State Fairgrounds to the northern end of the property — officials believe they can eliminate a portion of that excess 1.53 minutes.

"Most fires from Plum Street west come from 11th and Halstead, which is a long ERF," Hanen said.

The city council first authorized replacing Fire Station No. 1 in 2015, as part of a three-station development. Money was allocated last year for conceptual drawings, but the project was pushed off a year with the departure of city manager John Deardoff, Beer said.

The station will go on fairgrounds property and the plan was to swap the current station site for one just south of Skaets. But those negotiations have also been halted by the state fair manager leaving.

"We hope to have it back in the 2022 budget so we can finish that project up," Beer said.

Besides a better location, a new facility is needed to allow female firefighters to live and work there.

Dispatch times

Another measure is the time it takes from when 911 dispatch first receives a phone call to when the first units are dispatched to the scene, which is referred to as the Public Safety Answering Point or PSAP time.

The desired PSAP is within one minute for 90% of the time, Hanen said. The city is averaging 2 minutes and 45 seconds.

Another change targeted for 2022 is a new computer-aided dispatch system that runs in the background and electronically triggers alarms as a dispatcher is typing down information received on a call.

"A computer voice would come on at the fire station and say 'structure fire at 123 North Main,'" Hanen said. "The dispatcher would stay on the phone and continue to get information."

Those additional details would then be provided with fire trucks already in route, and decisions made on whether to upgrade or downgrade the call based on that.

"If we can save two minutes on dispatch and one minute of our time, that puts us on the scene three minutes faster, so we have a higher save value," Hanen said. "Every extra minute just kills us in our line of work."

There is also a three-year plan, Hanen said, to install traffic signal triggers which would give responding trucks all green lights. The first year would install them on main corridors, the second year on secondary corridors, and the third on other streets. He didn't say, however, when those installations may begin.

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