Proposed Fire Station #2 (Substation)

Boulder City Fire Department has identified gaps in response capabilities based on the findings of the 2021 Community Risk Assessment, 2018 Geographical Information System Emergency Response Capabilities Analysis Report by the International Association of Fire Fighters, the 2016 Insurance Services Office Rating Report, and the 2021 Insurance Service Office Rating Report.

This information is intended to serve as a guide for city leaders, and an informational document to help keep the community informed of the needs, the proposed process to close the gaps, and the estimated associated costs.

The findings of the reports consistently identified that the department is understaffed for the city it protects and the equipment is not properly spread across the city. The result is that homes, businesses, and citizens in the Lakeside, Del Prado, and San Felipe neighborhood zones are outside of the nationally recognized standard of four-minute drive time from the nearest fire station. In fact, there are several areas of the city that people live greater than eight minutes from the sole fire station. The staffing is also well below what is required to address the cities risks, as identified in the risk assessment document. In some instances, this is addressed through a mutual aid agreement with Henderson Fire Department. Examples would be structure fires, complex technical rescues, hazardous materials responses, and mass casualty medical incidents. However, the mutual aid cannot adequately support the routine medical incidents. The department has a high number of concurrent calls for service annually which require both ambulances (rescues) to be committed at the same time. When this occurs, there is no ambulance available within the city. When a subsequent call for a medical emergency comes in, the dispatch center must call Community Ambulance in Henderson to respond to the call. The average response time for one of these ambulances is twenty-two minutes, after they are contacted. This is critical if they are responding to a call such as a heart attack or a stroke where the sick person needs to be in a hospital immediately to save their life. This plan identifies a path forward that the fire department thinks addresses the gaps in as fiscally conservative way as possible.

The cost estimates are based on Spring 2022 numbers. With the rapidly changing national economy they are subject to vary. Read the entire report here or see chapters below.

Will Gray, Fire Chief

Introduction
2021 Insurance Services Office - Rating Report
2018 International Association of Firefighters Capabilities Analysis
Station 122
Proposed Facility
Funding
Staffing Proposal
Summary
PDF of Full BCFD Report

The following information will help explain the justification for the request for an additional fire station (Station 122) and increased staffing. The document will discuss the four different reports that have analyzed the fire department response capability It will include a proposed project for the Station 122 construction and location, as well as the estimated costs and timeline. There will also be options for how the new fire department personnel can be hired all at once, or in a phased approach that allows for the most benefit to the community.

2021 Community Risk Assessment Findings

The fire department set out to complete a community specific risk assessment in the spring of 2020 prior to the pandemic hitting the United States. The pandemic took priority for the department and significantly slowed the process while the department led the emergency management and overall pandemic response.

As the pandemic slowed in intensity, the fire department began to evaluate the city of Boulder City for all risks to the citizens, the environment, and the economic health of the community. This assessment included identifying a specific set of risks to include fire, emergency medical services, technical rescue, and hazardous materials response. This involved evaluating the community’s building stock to determine what risks are present such as building codes used for the construction, age of the buildings, uses, and occupants. This is critical when one considers that the city has four senior living facilities that have many occupants that are not able to easily move themselves out in the event of an emergency. Other buildings are used for large groups to assemble such as a church, the Smith Building, or a school. Each of these buildings present a different set of risks that must be planned for.

The department also looked at the historical emergency medical services call types within the city. This call type accounts for approximately 75% of the fire department’s calls for service. The city also has double the percentage of people over 65 years old as the national average, 32% to 16%. This is important as it typically means that the city will have about twice as many medical calls for assistance in areas such as traumatic falls, breathing difficult, heart attacks, and stroke. This knowledge helps the fire department make sure that the training, equipment, and resources are available to address these specific call types when someone calls for help. Many of these call types of calls are extremely time sensitive regarding treatment. The saying in the medical world is, “time is tissue”. This means that the longer you delay definitive treatment, the more heart or brain tissue that dies resulting in a poor outcome. In a cardiac arrest, every minute of delay to definitive treatment results in a 10% reduction in survival chances, according to the American Heart Association.