WHO'S MINDING THE ESD 4 STORE?

Who’s Minding The ESD 4 Store?

    ESD 4 Engine 407                                                                   ESD 4 Brush Truck 407 

In the late morning of Thursday, September 8^th, I am returning from a short fire ground survey of the Pedernales / Spicewood fire with a colleague and who do we pass, on Hwy 71 West, on their way to the Pedernales fire apparatus staging area, but the very ESD 4 engine, followed by its brush truck station counter-part assigned to the ESD fire station on City Park Road that provides my neighborhood and the surrounding area with 9-1-1 fire and medical protection.  

What struck us as odd was both of these fire vehicles are some, if not, the BEST of the ESD 4 fire fighting fleet.   They are front line units and they had apparently been pulled off their primary fire protection mission to help contain a wild fire that was no longer out of control, in fact, the fire line was spot firing and smoldering, had no lives at risk, no structures in harms way and there were 2 STARFlight helicopters and one contract Forest Service helicopter actively and systematically working what remained of the fire line.  For all practical purposes the fire was a mop-operation, nothing more.

 

 For the record, I have no problem with ESD 4 wanting to help another fire department, but ESD 4 is not your typical county fire department, in fact, some in the local fire community would say ESD 4 is a fire department in name only and as I noted in post 1, I certainly agree with that assessment.  ESD 4 has only two response areas, one East, and one West.  Each has just one station with an engine, a crew of 3 and a brush truck they can switch into for wild fire response.  Supporting these two stations (supposedly) is a Chiefs truck, with a Battalion Chief and a driver, located near North Lamar and Braker Lane.  The problem is nether station is close enough to support the other.  They are 17 miles apart and can’t possibly respond fast enough to the others area to offer any meaningful support.  Essentially each station is a mini fire department on to itself.  The Chiefs truck offers no help either because of the distance it has to travel to reach either response area.  Adding to this problem is the fact ESD 4’s West station, on City Park Road, is smack in the middle of what the Texas Forest Service considers the most lethal wild land fire area within the state.  When I worked for the Austin Fire Department, in the early 90’s, I participated in a city-county wild fire evacuation study on how residents could be moved quickly to safety during a catastrophic wild fire.   One of the area’s we looked at closely was Long Canyon because of its single entry / exit and potential for  high property loss and casualties.  I flew several missions over the neighborhood plotting out the threat potentials and assessing how fire crews could manage a fire and an evacuation simultaneously.  The American Statesman recently highlighted this same threat after last weeks wild fires and referenced both the Texas Forest Services wild fire categorization and a fire threat report by a colleague of mine, Kevin Baum, former Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief, who wrote his masters thesis on the area’s explosive potential for a wild fire to destroy property, injure and kill under the right conditions.  Those “right conditions” are what we are experiencing now in Austin.

To get a better perspective on this issue, I placed calls to several friends who have their fingers on the pulse of the local fire community to find out what they might know about ESD 4 sending its best resources to a mop-up fire operation.   I was told the Emergency Operations Center County Fire Resource Coordinator asked ESD 4 if it could provide some manpower and fire fighting support at the Pedernales fire.  Now the operational astute and experienced fire manager, aware of ESD 4’s severe operational limitations in providing even most basic fire protection to its two separate response areas and the fact the western jurisdiction is considered the MOST PRONE to DEVASTATING WILD FIRE IN THE AUSTIN AREA would probably have had the common sense to beg off the assignment entirely or offer to send in a contingent of off duty or volunteer staff and perhaps a reserve fire fighting vehicle.  But ESD 4’s management did just the opposite and sent their best fire vehicles from the City Park Station and back filled with a “reserve” engine, Engine 410 and a Brush Truck 401 from its East Travis County Station.  

For the uninitiated, back filling with a “reserve” fire engine might seem reasonable but for experienced emergency fleet managers, back filling with a reserve unit is a last resort and always has lots of unintended operational consequences.

The problem with “reserve” vehicles, especially for the small resource thin fire department like ESD 4, is they are not front-line quality apparatus. They were moved off of active duty because of their age, mileage and mechanical reliability.  The small fire department retains these vehicles because it’s the only option they have for a backup vehicle. Basically it’s either no back up or a back up vehicle with limited capacity and some backup is better than no backup. The vehicle can still pull limited duty, very short run but because they are older and more work worn they have a tendency to breakdown at the worst possible moments during an emergency. That’s exactly what happened the following day for Engine 410.  During a wild fire support operation with Austin Fire Department Brush Truck 31 reserve Engine 410 had a pump failure during a simple water transfer (about a minute and half into the operation). And this was the ESD 4 fire engine assigned for fire protection to my neighborhood, an area considered the most prone to destructive and catastrophic wild fire.  As a ESD 4 taxpayer, you would think I would benefit from and have priority for the best, most reliable emergency fire vehicles, since I am paying for the services, but in ESD 4 the taxpayer is not considered important in the framework of how operational decisions are made (reference post 2 about my encounter with the ESD 4 Board President)

In similar fashion, reassigning the brush truck from ESD 4’s East Travis County station to the City Park Road station in its Western jurisdiction was a rob Peter to pay Paul scenario.   It essentially took away the wild fire protection available to ESD 4’s eastern jurisdiction and for what reason?  To help mop-up a smoldering fire in another fire district, not even adjacent to ESD 4?  Help me Jesus!  Now they did eventually back fill the brush truck they moved to City Park Road, with a loaner from Manor, but again, why all the shuffling? Why not just let Manor send their extra brush truck and back fill with off duty staff or volunteer staff from ESD 4?

Given what I know about ESD 4’s limited operational abilities, and the high fire threat area we live in, this rob Peter to pay Paul approach struck me as terribly short-sighted on the part of ESD 4’s management.  If a wild fire begins in the area, and the wind is like it was during last weeks fire, I want to know ESD 4 has the best and most reliable vehicles on the front-line, not the reserves.  Time is everything in a fire; especially a fast moving wild fire and any delays because of a faulty vehicle will cost property and potentially lives.  My neighbors and I can’t afford for the fire-fighter’s we depend on to have any delays because the vehicle they are using does not perform as well as their front-line vehicle. ESD 4 taxpayers deserve the best in fire-fighting vehicles and equipment, not second best as we have now. 

NOTE: As of today Monday, September 12^th, we still have the problem of second best protecting our neighborhood:  Engine 410 (reserve) and Brush Truck 401 were still at ESD 4’s City Park Road Station 7. 

Bottom-line: ESD 4 would be better off getting out of providing fire protection altogether and instead contract for those services with the Austin Fire Department.  Austin Fire has generously offered to take over ESD 4’s services on more than one occasion for just the existing taxes, nothing more.  And what most do not know is that Austin already provides ESD 4 with over $315,000 in unreimbursed fire response annually.  For reasons only the ESD 4 Board can explain, they refuse to allow any formal dialog with Austin Fire.  Why the ESD 4 Board is so dismissive towards such a discussion can be explained by one word: INCOMPETENCE.  ESD 4 can’t touch what AFD would provide in services FOR THE SAME TAX DOLLARS!  AFD offers immediate improvement in service quality and would reduce homeowner insurance rates substantially because AFD has a much better ISO rating.   It’s time the ESD Board start representing the interests of the taxpayers and stop pretending its F troop operation can deliver the same services other fire departments can. It can’t!   Red fire trucks do not make a fire department.  It takes seasoned management with lots of common sense, the latest in fire resources and lots of them, quick response times, well trained fire-fighters and support services, none of which ESD 4 has now or ever will have in the future. 

Note: My next post will discuss why Travis County needs to either create a metro approach with the City of Austin for fire services and consolidate all city and county fire operations into one metro department WITH professional fire managers, or unify all ESD operations under one or two Super ESD’s using ESD 2 and ESD 6 as the day to day Super ESD managers.   These two ESD’s have exceptionally well managed fire departments with will trained staff, good equipment and career paths for its employees that includes health and retirement benefits (no one else, not even West Lake’s well funded ESD offers that type of comprehensive management structure). Travis County must get away from the unnecessarily expensive duplication of service with its 13 ESD’s (13 paid chiefs, 13 paid administrations, 13 paid command staffs), variable levels of training and service levels and eliminate once and for all the petty fire department fiefdoms managed by vain and self-serving personalities and incompetent oversight boards that plague a number of the County’s current ESD’s. Either way, the taxpayers will be better served and the quality of those services will dramatically improve.