Emergency response time increasing

(CU Independent illustration/Molly Maher)

The Boulder Fire Department is looking to improve call response time.

During a study session held Tuesday night, Boulder City Council reviewed the fire department’s response performance as a part of the Fire-Rescue Master Plan.

The Boulder Fire Department achieved the national standard of responding to calls in six minutes or less nine out of ten times only 65 percent of the time, said Fire Chief Larry Donner. According to an article in the Denver Post, in 2007, the department met the national standard 80 percent of the time.

“We need to decide whether to continue to measure against the standard that we have difficulty meeting or do we raise a white flag and change the standards we are meeting,” Donner said.

In the 90th percentile, the Boulder Fire Department responds to calls in seven minutes and 53 seconds, but on average the department met the standard, responding in five minutes and 18 seconds, Donner said. Although the average is a more favorable statistic, Donner said he thinks the 90th percentile is a better representation of their performance.

“But we don’t look at the average; we want to look at the 90th percentile because it’s a better measure for the customer to know how soon we will respond,” Donner said.

Donner said there are many factors that affect response time from the amount of time it takes dispatch to process the call to the Boulder traffic. Traffic density and lack of alternate driving routes of Boulder play a large role in the response time, Donner said.

Zack Schubert, a 19-year-old sophomore business major, said he felt the Boulder Fire Department still performs well despite falling below the national standards.

“It seems like they are still acceptable because they respond quickly, but it would be great if they could perform at the national level,” Schubert said.

Donner said he felt the fire department could perform better by getting more advanced technology.

“Putting in a new dispatch system that allows [us] to coordinate with GPS and automatically pick the station and equipment that will get there faster will help,” Donner said.

Donner also noted that installing sprinkler systems would help with response time.

“Then when we arrived we would be dealing with the water damage which is easier to deal with than smoke damage,” Donner said.

On campus, CU is a step ahead when it comes to sprinkler installation, Donner said.

“CU voluntarily installed sprinklers in their residence halls as they remodeled,” Donner said.

As for CU, Donner said the campus accounted for only one percent of the calls last year.

“On campus we get extremely good cooperation, which is unusual compared nationally,” Donner said.

However, in 2009, a mere two percent of the service calls were for fires, with the 61 percent majority pertaining to Rescue EMS calls, Donner said. This has caused Boulder Mayor Susan Osborne to express an interest in bringing additional smaller vehicles to the fire department.

“With near 60 percent of the calls being for EMS, with a smaller, more agile vehicle, we could cut more on response time,” Osborne said.

After reviewing the Fire-Rescue Master Plan, the city council expressed that they wanted to wait for a revised plan that showed updated fiscal estimates for accomplishing the fire department’s performance goals as well as their other future plans and a completed study comparing Boulder to other fire departments.

Councilman Macon Cowles said he would also like the department to find factors they could change internally to accomplish their goals.

“I feel like where you talk about your performance standards…they look like factors external to the department,” Cowles said. “I’d like to see more reflection within the department to reduce them.”

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Rose Heaphy at Josephine.heaphy@colorado.edu.