The city’s 100-foot aerial fire truck could be shifted to the Union Road location to be better positioned to respond to what will become Manteca’s greatest concentration of people within two months — the Great Wolf Lodge.

The $180 million indoor waterpark resort has an extensive fire suppression system and meets all of the state’s latest safety requirements. The Great Wolf chain also has a solid safety and fire record.

On a day-to-day basis it will have the highest concentration of people in one single structure in Manteca. If all 500 rooms are occupied and you include potential non-hotel guests using the restaurants and family entertainment area along with employees there could be as many as 3,000 people on site at any given time.

The hotel is also the tallest structure in Manteca at six stories.

City Manager Miranda Lutzow said the outside assessment of the fire department’s response times and capabilities that the City Council will review when they meet Tuesday at 7 p.m. during a Zoom meeting points to the wisdom of relocating the aerial truck now at the Powers Avenue station.

The study verified that 97 percent of the time engine companies stationed at the city’s five fire stations can meet a targeted 5-minute travel time to incidents. The city has a 5-minute response time as a goal in the municipal general plan to strive for the best outcomes in fires and medical emergencies. It also concluded the city’s current placement of fire stations and resources as healthy.

Based on the shortest route to Great Wolf, the Powers Avenue station is at least 1½ miles farther away if the initial dispatch of an incident requires an aerial truck. Along the way the 100-foot fire truck if it stayed on surface streets would have to travel through five major intersections and a two-lane stretch of Yosemite Avenue.

That is opposed to the 100-foot truck being housed at the Union Road station.  After being dispatched and making a right turn almost immediately after leaving the station it would be on Daniels Street making it a straight shot to Great Wolf with the only major intersection being at Airport Way.

The Union Road station was built nearly 20 years ago to house a standard fire engine company as well as a 100-foot aerial truck.

The truck was moved a number of years back to Powers Avenue based on the fact it was more central to high risk structures that could require an aerial truck such as distribution centers and large retail complexes in Spreckles Park as well as large retail and industrial uses in the vicinity of Industrial Park Drive and South Main Street as well as Manteca’s only 3-story apartment complex at the time, the 298-unit Paso Villas.

By locating the aerial truck back to Union Road, it will be more central to all larger structures that now exist  in the city including Great Wolf, a three-story apartment complex with almost 450 units under construction east of Bass Pro Shops as well as the Center Point Business Park on North Airport Way where Amazon, 5.11 Tactical and Lowe’s Home Improvement operate large distribution centers.

Some over the years have questioned the wisdom of rolling the aerial truck on all calls.

First, Manteca does have the structures where they may need to get water to the middle of a 550,000-square-foot structure. The aerial engine can be more effective than standard engine companies on other fire calls in containing the spreading of flames quicker as it can reach up and over parked cars to attack two-story house fires.

 The study the council is receiving Tuesday made it clear the city’s current network of five stations all have a greater resiliency of 87 percent. That is defined by the ability of resources assigned to a specific station to answer all calls within the assigned areas based on call statistics between May 2019 and August 2020. As such, it is measure of the health of the current resource allocation and station locations.

That represents a significant improvement in fire service levels. Until the Lathrop Road and Woodward Avenue stations opened, Manteca for at least 20 years had between 2,000 and 3,000 housing units in any given year outside of the targeted five-minute response time.

Attached travel time maps also show almost all development planned in South Manteca currently including those breaking ground, those with lots approved to build on, and those just recently proposed for annexation and development would fall within the five-minute travel response times from existing stations. Segments of the Hat Ranch project, and Manteca Trails would be just outside of the five minute travel time.

That means a sixth fire station is not an immediate concern.

However, it eventually may make sense for two engine companies — a standard engine and the aerial engine — to both be housed at the Union Road station based on the potential growth in call volume south of the 120 Bypass.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com