Manteca’s automatic fire aid with Ripon is likely to end once the replacement Austin Road/Highway 99 interchange opens.

Mayor Gary Singh Tuesday confirmed the automatic aid agreement that dispatches the nearest engine company from either the City of Manteca or the Ripon Consolidated Fire District will eventually be replaced by a mutual aid agreement.

Mutual aid isn’t automatic.

The jurisdiction being called can decline to respond.

And while declining to respond for a variety of reasons such as the department being asked either being short staffed or committed to a major incident, the biggest difference is getting approval to send an engine could add a minute or so to response times.

The multi-year automatic aid agreement, similar to one the City of Manteca has with the Lathrop Manteca Fire District, expired in October 2025.

The city opted to keep it in place for an additional year for several reasons.

*The number of automatic aid calls to the Ripon district dropped after an error in dispatching was corrected that often dispatched both a Manteca and a Ripon fire engine at the same time. Now Manteca is dispatched when Ripon Fire makes it clear they are needed.

*The temporary removal of the Austin Road overcrossing of Highway 99 added a significant time for the closest station in Manteca at Atherton and Woodward to respond to emergency calls in East Manteca along Austin Road as well as to auto accidents on the freeways feeding into the 120 Bypass/Highway interchange.

The issue of automatic aid — which was heavily one-sided in Ripon Fire’s favor at the time — became an issue in Manteca’s November 2024 Measure Q sales tax election.

There were 168 times in 2023 where automatic aid dispatched a Manteca Fire engine to a call within the Ripon Consolidated Fire District boundaries.

At the time, there were nearly 3,000 homes in southwest Manteca outside of the city’s grafted 5 minute response time based on the point of dispatch to arrival on scene.

Critics of automatic aid noted when Manteca engine companies were responding to calls outside of their assigned station coverage areas to handle a call in southwest Manteca — combined with one of the high number of automatic Ripon calls — it created situations for longer than normal response times in the city.

Rank-and-file firefighters are quick to swat down a suggestion some made at the time that even mutual aid be dropped as  that would essentially make Manteca an island when it comes to fires and other emergency calls.

Not only does mutual aid put in place a formal agreement to help neighboring fire protection services when they may have all available engine companies committed, but it assures the  strong likelihood a typical structural fire would have the optimum firefighting personnel of 14 to 15 on scene.

A growing number of Manteca residents have questioned continuing the automatic aid with Ripon, pointing out Manteca taxpayers had just assessed themselves for improvement municipal services including more robust fire protection while Ripon voters several years ago rejected a parcel tax measure to add a second staffed engine to protect their overall community

Lathrop Manteca Fire, City

of Manteca automatic aid

The Lathrop Manteca Fire District and the City of Manteca have had an automatic aid agreement  in place for several decades.

At one point in the 1990s, the Lathrop district’s board — that was operating under its old moniker of the Manteca Lathrop Rural Fire District — expressed unhappiness with the arrangement after several years of calls going 60-40 in the City of Manteca’s favor.

The city noted there were years when their engines responded more often into the fire district’s territory.

That said, the responses have never been as one-sided as Ripon-Manteca in recent years.

That was even true in 2011 when Lathrop Manteca reduced staffing at their two non-City of Lathrop stations in rural Manteca going from three-man to two-man engines and occasionally having to brown out one of those the stations.

Just like Ripon-Manteca, the Lathrop-Manteca automatic aid dispatches the closest apparatus based on where it is at in relation to a 9-1-1 call.

In addition, the Lathrop-Manteca automatic aid includes dispatching additional engines to structure fires.

One Lathrop Manteca fire station is located on South Union in the rural area south of Manteca.

The other Lathrop Manteca fire station is located on Lathrop Road near Austin Road to the east of Manteca.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com