Medical calls drive responses as Joplin Fire Department’s aid expands

Aug. 23--It wasn't too many years after mining and business interests founded Joplin in 1873 that the need for organized fire protection was recognized.

At first, businesses were required to keep barrels of water and buckets at the ready and, when a blaze erupted, all able-bodied men were expected to respond. Despite those precautions, serious fires occurred and caused big losses. In 1893, city officials decided to establish a full-time, paid department.

Today, 126 years later, the Joplin Fire Department is seeing one of its busiest years ever, according to fire Chief Jim Furgerson. He delivered the department's 2018 annual report accounting for its activities to the Joplin City Council on Monday.

The department no longer has a single mission -- fighting fires.

Though that remains a main purpose, the department has expanded its variety of services over the years to include providing first responder medical assistance, inspecting buildings for adherence to building fire safety codes, rescue operations, containment and eradication of hazardous material leaks and spills, mutual aid to other departments, and training for all those jobs.

The department responded to 8,942 calls for service in 2018. That is a 15% increase in four years, Furgerson said. "This year we are on pace to have 9,400 calls," he added.

Of all the department's services, its largest and fastest growing sector is medical assistance, which accounted for 69% of the 2018 calls, the chief said. Those calls are largely made for assistance to the elderly, transients and the homeless, the chief said.

Jason Smith, chief of the Metro Emergency Transport System, said that is a vital role of fire departments.

"All the fire departments in the county provide that service. They all are trained from responder level up to paramedic level. It's always beneficial to have the extra trained hands on scene," Smith said. "And, equally important, the response of medically trained firefighters can start providing medical care well in advance of the arrival of the ambulance."

Fires constitute a smaller sector of business -- only about 11% -- but provides millions of dollars in protection, according to the department's figures.

The value of property involved in fires in 2018 is listed by the department as more than $108 million and the city's building codes along with the response by the firefighters saved nearly $105 million of that property, according to the report. About $3.7 million worth of property was lost in 2018 to fires.

In addition to fire calls for structures, grass and car accidents, the department provides mutual aid to fires in Webb City, the northern half of the Redings Mill Fire District, and the eastern half of the Duenweg Fire District, where the department has agreements for that assistance. Though no agreement is in place with Carl Junction, the department does respond to fires in the Carl Junction Fire Protection District.

Joplin's distribution of fire stations and other factors have earned Joplin an Insurance Services Office rating of 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. A rating of 1 is the best.

Councilman Keenan Cortez asked Furgerson how Joplin could achieve a 1 rating.

"You've got to pay for it," the chief said. "It costs a lot of money. Stations have to be perfectly located," and there has to be more staffing and water capacity.

Furgerson said he was told that one regional city tore down a station and built a new one only seven blocks away to get a 1 rating, a move that cost millions of dollars.

The department's target response time for structure fires is 5 minutes and 20 seconds under ISO regulations. Response times at most of the city's fire stations are far less than that to structure fires. The main station at 303 E. Third St. has a response time to structure fires of 3 minutes and 43 seconds. The response time to other types of calls from that station is 5 minutes and 2 seconds.

Most of the city's stations are in that range, although response times to an area that would be covered by a proposed seventh station in the Crossroads Industrial Park would be higher -- 9 minutes and 29 seconds -- because units must respond from the other six districts.

Response to a fire alarm involves two engines, one ladder truck, one rescue truck and at least one chief officer.

Some of the fires in which structures and equipment were saved occurred at local manufacturing plants such as Ajinomoto Foods and R&R Recycling.

"We have a very good building code in place. We do enforce our code," Furgerson said. That code includes a requirement for sprinkler systems in buildings over certain sizes.

"We do company inspections and new business inspections, so we have a very nice fire prevention program in place," Furgerson said.

Furgerson credited the department's firefighter training and ability, along with equipment, for the rescue of 10 workers from a Joplin manufacturing plant in May 2018. Three of the workers were trapped in a storage tank, and the others were trying to get them out. The rescue was successful in saving lives, although one firefighter was injured.

The department last year, mainly through grant money and donations, replaced equipment used in several types of rescues. All its self-contained breathing units were replaced, and the department bought cardiac monitors and obtained new rescue harnesses and bailout kits, mostly with grant funding.

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