Build a Lee Hill fire station or move forward with constructing a new facility for Chancellor Volunteer Fire and Rescue on Rt. 3?

?????You mean to tell me that the follow-up question was not asked by someone? Hmmm, could it be that Mr. Pitts just felt the “need” to say something?

With the recent “publicity” shed on Fire and Rescue here, I wonder when the BOS is going to get the message that there are huge problems that are “begging” for serious attention?

Made my comments but the FLS CAPCHA did me in and would not allow me to return to my comments I wanted to spring on you.Isn’t technology great, with its many different thresholds of accountability. Maybe I’ll find my comments hidden away in one of those computer files I thought was lost to my poor keyboard and typing skills. Since the subject is not going to change anytime soon, I’ll wait for its ugly head to rise again

In a manner of speaking, I still live in Lee’s Hill. The Lee’s Hill Community Association, Inc and the Greens’ Townhouse Association, Inc, have yet to sell our house under terms of their Stragesic Litigation Strategy and foreclosure on our house. I’m sure many of our reader recall “The Wall” stories.

As to building another fire station, my focus is on response times embedded in the County’s rule book and how long it should take to arrive at the scene…any scene where law enforcement, EMTs, Fire and Fire Reccue are needed. Who shows up and what their qualifications are is another matter entirely.

Supv Pitts is pushing the same agenda as he has always done. He’s rooted in law enforcement and always has been. He would go so far as to separate law enforcement, Fire and Rescue as a separate entity in County government and immune from any budget cuts being found in the total county government population.

The example I was working on before CAPTCHA cut me off at the knees, started with a hypothetical head-on crash at Rt 2 and Rt 17, one car burning, one person who had yet to be declared dead, 3 very seriously injured and it’s 9pm on a Saturday night. Call into the dispatcher comes in at 9:05pm. Start the clock. How long would it take before law enforcement. EMTs, and Fire and Rescue to arrive at this scene…in Lee’s Hill. I’m gping to guess around 20 minute, but concede Chief Eudaily and the BOS have these numbers. as well as the per-capita taxes need to be generated to construct a new station in Lee’s Hill and renovate Chancellor. Both are already on the drawing board.

Let me turn around for just a moment.

Who shows at the scene of this collision? Volunteers, certified EMTs, AND career emergency personnel?

The car on fire has yet to explode. How long before it does and who’s going to put out the fire. How many ambulances at the scene to carry off the 3 very serious injuries…to where and how long will it take to get there. The clock is still running. The fire is out, 3 very serious injuries are being transported and clean-up is just about to start.

Based on Lee’s Hill’s intentions the district is planning for high density populations. A Train Station is expected at Summit Crossing, as well as Tricord’s development agendas, Cosner’s redevelopment plans for the Rt 17 corridor, and Silver’s 3% Bond money that the County put up for a bridge over Rt 95, to access Cosners/Silvers Hospitsl, County/VRE train station and all points leading east to the Virginia coast.

With all the trucking commerse that will be using the Rt 17
corridor one might think the trucking might want to contribute more to the development and maintenance of these road networks that inure to there benefit and bottom lines. Saving time and making money should be worth something to the County’s coffers.

Bond money is still left over from the last time the County chose to underwrite county development and construction communities. Simply said, Lee’s Hill will necessarily get their fire station and Chancellor it shot in the arm.

The real hard part of this equation is who’s going to man and support reasonable levels of qualified people at these stations. Once the politics of saving lives in Spotsy is over, maybe we can start stacking up all those lives lost and will continue to be lost as leverage against those who have their heads buried in the sand.

Larry, we already have service/taxing districts. Cosner East and Cosner West come to mind. The RESOLUTIONS read commerce will be responsible for additional taxes, but there is wording the County can use to include property owners as well, should the need arise. With ADRs in the mix and already identified by the Planning Commision and BOS, it shouldn’t be too much longer before “per-capita” measurements will be nothing more than a warning sign that the glaa is not only full but overflowing.

ditto: re: service districts… the Cosner’s corner districts are for infrastructure as opposed to operational expenses.

but there are such a thing as residential service districts for those neighborhoods who want to put their money where their mouth is and not wait for the rest of the taxpayers in the county to cough up the money for Lee’s Hill.

I’m not suggesting one way or the other – just pointing out that it is an option – and not a particularly unusual one in many areas of the country.

It’s interesting listening to various folks talk about what kind of response time they think they are entitled to.

I’ll be honest – I don’t know what running area I am in nor do I know what the response time is nor how it compares to other districts in the county nor what a good, bad, mediocre, state standard is. I also don’t know whether or not the stations that serve us are 24hr staffed nor what percentage of the staff is career or volunteer.

I suspect that as ignorant as I am .. that I’m not alone…

but we do know for sure that if Mr. Barnes intended to fund a Lee HIll station – the staffing costs would have had to be in his proposed budget – right?

Thanks Bill. Think of me as having never left Spotsy.

Larry: Response times and per-capita accountability in the arenas of lawenforcement, EMTs, Fire and Rescue are only important to those inside a burning house/building or slumpted over the wheel of a car and can’t yell for help because of the fumes, a punctured lung or an inflating airbag that took their breathe away. If saving lives is just a number, percentage or how many broken eggs there are in a total year end tally of injured or dead, why should anyone care about response times? Chief Eudaily knows how long it would take to get to the accident scene I’ve described from CURRENT and established resources in the county. The longer it takes to pick up and deliver 3 very seriously injured person’s to a hospital could be all the difference between adding two more deaths to the talley mentioned in my prior blog.

I know. I’m just being selfish by putting myself behind the wheel of that car and wondering how loud I could have yelled for help, BEFORE the accodent ever took place.

You all have good ideas and a lot of questions that should be anwsered. Response times play a significant role in the Fire and Rescue business. Especially in the setting of acute strokes, sudden cardiac arrests, fires in occupied dwellings and severe motor vehicle accidents. All of these incidents happen almost daily in this County.

Every Fire and Rescue system prides themselves on quick response times with appropiate apparatus both Fire and EMS, EMT’s,certified paramedics and experienced Firefighter’s and Fire Officer’s. Of course the more rural area’s of the County are going to have a slightly higher response times due to distances traveled. The rural stations, mostly unmanned in the late evenings have a significant longer response time due to volunteer members that have to go to the station to get apparatus from home.

If these stations had 24/7 staffing the personnel would be in the stations and ready to respond immediatley.

So… back to the punctured lung patient or the serious car crash victum. This is where the second part of a really good Fire and EMS will shine. The level of care that EMS providers are able to give the patients in the field. So, do you want a Basic EMT to show up and take your blood pressure, pulse and give you some oxygen to comfort you in hopes you make it the hospital alive? Or would you like to have a Paramedic that can do all of that, the basic guy can do, plus start IV’s, place a breathing tube, place you on a ventilator, temporarily fix your punctured lung, monitor your heart rhythm, pulse oximetry, co2,and administer life saving medications?

If I were the patient and I was paying for the ambulance ride, or not paying I would want the Paramedic to show up and transport me to the hospital and do all that was possible to help me.

This is why the general public needs to understand the difference between having 10 stations staffed with Advanced Life Support Medic Units Monday-Friday,and then settling for Basic Life Support Ambulances staffed weeknights and most weekends. That represents a large disparity in service levels and should be addressed.

I would have to agree with “therestofthestory” and say that the volunteers are still needed in this combined system, but lets consolidate the equipment and personnel resources and have them work out of two or three stations in the County “preferrably the busier one’s” and place 24/7 career coverage in rural stations and sorrounding the two or three volunteer stations. The volunteer’s would be responsible for staffing those stations 24/7, and when coverage started to lapse fill the voids with career staff.

Also there would have to be a standard set of operating guidelines followed by both the volunteer and career personnel while on duty. Training standards would also have to be in place to prevent the 6 month old Firefighter from playing officer and driving firetrucks. Restructure of all current resources would benefit this County as it continues to grow and develope.

Placing a station in the Lee’s Hill area should be a priority with the increasing industry, future VRE station, ethonal plant and extended response times to the Rt.2 and Rt. 17 intersection. Just some food for thought…

Someone asked the question earlier about the cost to staff a new station 24/7 with career personnel. The cost would be in the area of 1.2 million, which is about one penny on the real estate tax.

Here’s some more food for thought. There is roughly 8 million left in the bonds that were approved in 2001. If the county is frugal in the design and construction of the facilities, both the replacement Chancellor station and the new Lee Hill station could be built for that amount of money. There is no need to build the exorbitant facilities such as those at the Courthouse and on Falcon Drive. The excess in those two stations alone could have built at least one additional fire station.

Now, I’m sure the question will be raised about funding for new equipment at the Lee Hill station. Well that’s another area the county could save greatly. The county has a surplus of fire and rescue vehicles in excellent condition that could be transferred to the new station and serve for several years without needing to be replaced.

These ideas are not farfetched. However, someone needs to take control of the fire and rescue departments to make them happen. As long as the Fire & EMS Commission is allowed to reign supreme nothing will ever be accomplished and taxpayer dollars will continue to be wasted.

In a perfect world maybe, the geographically closest station would be available and in service when a critical event takes place. In the real world, it’s just not so. Each F/R station in Spotsylvania staffs 1 ambulance and 1 fire apparatus at a time. This is true for both career and volunteer agencies. There’s no such thing as a guaranteed response time for a service, unless you plan to staff 1 ambulance and engine per household in every first due area. It doesn’t really matter how much money your “service district” puts into building and staffing a station, if that ALS unit is busy transporting the “abdominal pain” from two blocks over, then your 911 call is going to be serviced by the next due unit, which in the case of Lee’s Hill South, or the 2/17 interchange, would be Station 8 at Thornburg. If that unit is also on a call, then it falls to the third due, and so on.