The number of households at a higher risk in a medical emergency or fire grows each week in Manteca.

Essentially all of those impacted are the buyers of homes ranging from $600,000 to $900,000 in rapidly growing southwest Manteca.

As such, they are also paying the highest taxes per home in Manteca,

The homes are located outside of the 5-minute response time for firefighters answering 9-1-1 calls.

It is the same area where arsonists destroyed five homes under construction during December and January.

The longer response time posed a serious threat to other homes.

The 5-minute target — incorporated in language in the Manteca general plan that serves as a blueprint for community growth — was selected given it is the longest time that is optimum for the best possible results from a medical or fire emergency.

And in many cases, response times to southwest Manteca have been pushing 10 minutes.

What that means if someone in a household suffers a medical emergency — stroke, heart attack, blunt force injuries and such — the odds of bad outcomes running the gamut from permanent damage to death starts accelerating significantly.

That is based on national studies if it takes more than five minutes from the time a fire engine is dispatched to arrive on scene.

While deaths and injuries are rare in Manteca fires, what isn’t are deaths and serious medical conditions connected with 63 percent of the 10,590 calls the department handled in 2022.

There is a need now for a sixth fire station, noted Fire Chief Dave Marques.

His stance is backed up by an outside analysis the city commissioned almost four years ago regarding the potential for response times to deteriorate.

The study demonstrated there were a need back then for a fire station in southwest Manteca.

Today, it is getting worse with each house built and sold.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to city leaders.

Marques for the past three budget cycles has asked for three additional firefighters.

The idea was after the course of three years, the city would have enough staffing to man a sixth engine company at a new fire station 24/7.

The stepped up phase in would have been offset by a reduction in overtime required for firefighters to cover vacations, illnesses, and long-term convalescing from work-related injuries.

Elected leaders and senior management staff balked at the phase in of manpower that allowed the city to ease into the staffing of the Atherton Drive and Woodward Avenue fire station when it finally opened.

The reason was simple.

They didn’t believe the city was in a position to make a solid case for a tax measure — a key need to fund additional frontline public safety personnel — until they had the city’s financial bookkeeping in order.

And now that issue will be finally settled in the next few months, city staff is expected to start prepping for a tax measure.

Meanwhile, the projected need has become real and then some.

Marques said the department’s request will be for nine firefighters in the 2024-2025 fiscal year — the amount the fire chief had hoped to have onboard by June of 2025 under an incremental approach.

And while a fire station located in southwest Manteca is literally a growing critical need with each passing week, the city meanwhile can ease their weakened public safety position in southwest Manteca by manning a second engine company at the Union Road station.

The stop gap-measure is not optimum.

But it does help get more manpower at Union Road that was by far the city’s busiest station in 2022 with 2,963 calls.

And while data for 2023 has yet to be compiled, Marques noted the number of calls the Union Road station handled last year went up significantly.

There are often times when the Union Road engine is out ion a call on their service territory when a second emergency occurs forcing an engine company to respond from elsewhere in the city to further increase response time.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com