Manteca firefighters are arriving at emergency calls quicker despite an increase in calls.
And nowhere is the improvement in response time better than in northwest Manteca where average response times plummeted by 2.5 minutes in 2014 down to 3.5 minutes.
It’s all attributable to the opening of the city’s fourth fire station on Lathrop Road west of Union Road in September 2013 and the hiring of one additional firefighter.
Citywide response time improved to just over 4.2 minutes from the time an engine was dispatched in 2014. It is slightly below 2011 levels and is a significant improvement over 2013 when the time was close to 4.35 minutes on average.
The average response time citywide in 2010 was just over 4.1 minutes.
That’s significant due to annual calls increasing by roughly 30 percent from 2010 going from about 4,600 to just over 5,900 in 2014.
Next on the department’s radar is the full staffing of the Lathrop Road station and opening a fifth station at Atherton Dive and Woodward Avenue. Currently response times in southeast Manteca are averaging 6.5 minutes.
Firefighters arriving on scene within five minutes or less of a call improve the chances significantly for the best case scenario in a fire or a major medical emergency.
The design plans for the fifth station are expected to be 30 percent completed by October. That will allow the city to move quickly once funding is available for construction and staffing. The city already owns the site. The fire station is being designed to serve as a template for a sixth station expected to go in southwest Manteca.
The Lathrop Road station is fully staffed 56 percent of the time allowing an engine to respond. On days it is not, the rescue unit with two freighters is dispatched to calls. Two additional firefighters are needed to staff the station 100 percent of the time.
The opening of the Lathrop Road station required hiring only one more firefighter due to a strategy to maximize resources and the effectiveness of fire responses under the city’s tight fiscal situation.
Normally, the opening of a new station would require hiring nine firefighters for 24/7 coverage with an average annual payroll and benefit cost exceeding $1 million. That would have severely impacted the general fund.
Fire Chief Kirk Waters devised a plan required only $165,000 more a year — $125,000 for staffing and $40,000 for utilities and upkeep — to open the Lathrop Road fire station. To avoid initially impacting the stressed general fund, the City Council covered that tab by dipping into the $8 million public safety endowment account.
That account was created after the developers of Del Webb at Woodridge and Union Ranch agreed to a $7,000 per home public safety endowment fee for police and fire services. The fee has only been paid by the two subdivisions that also happen to be among those benefitting from the new fire station. The fund is not being replenished with additional fees.
Waters will discuss his vision for the 2015-16 fiscal years during the City Council’s goal and budget priority setting workshop taking place today at 1:30 p.m. at the Civic Center, 1001 W. Center St.
