EAST FORK 2017 Standards of Cover Serving the Fire and Life Safety Needs of Our Community EAST FORK 2017 Standards of Cover Table of Contents Secon Title Page 1 Execuve Summary i 2 What is a Standard of Cover? 1 3 Community Risk Analysis 10 4 Response Times: Background and Current 32 5 Standards: Background and Incident Scene Staffing 37 6 East Fork 2016: An Overview 51 7 Trial Period 81 8 East Fork Fire 2017 86 9 Items That Would Require Re‐Evaluaon 101 Serving the Fire and Life Safety Needs of Our Community EAST FORK FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT STANDARDS OF COVER EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Prepared By Tod F. Carlini, District Fire Chief The East Fork Fire Protection District, in 2006, saw the first ever, governing body approved, Ten Year Strategic Plan. One of the more aggressive and challenging objectives within this plan was the development of a Standards of Cover for the district. Six years later, the District’s first Standard of Cover was developed internally and adopted by the District Board of Fire Commissioners. Now, four years later as part of an update to the Strategic Plan, the District has revised its Standard of Cover. This document describes our service area, the risks that must be protected and reduced within the jurisdiction, our capabilities, and our performance objectives and measures. This information will allow the District to identify risks in the jurisdiction, analyze and establish levels of response service to respond to those risks, and most importantly, evaluate the performance through benchmarked response times and staffing objectives. These response time goals, staffing objectives, and resource deployment will contribute to our commitment to continually improve how we deliver our services. In revising the deployment plan, the methodology used requires the assumption that it is reasonable, realistic, fiscally sound, based on factual data, contract compliant, and safe in the allocation and deployment of personnel, both career and volunteer, and the physical resources of the district. The plan must also attempt to adhere to all related rules, regulations and requirements. Also taken into consideration are nationally adopted standards, such as those promulgated by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the American Heart Association (AHA), the International Association of County Mangers (ICMA), and Insurance Services Offices (ISO), as examples. Using multiple standards to gauge performance can serve as an effective and well balanced “checks and balances” of the entire deployment model specific to the District. While NFPA 1710’s primary focus is on staffing, the American Heart Association tends to consider response time for emergency medical services. The International Association of County Manager’s standards attempt to relate services level in the form of a ratio between the population of the area served and the number of responders available. Lastly, ISO, serves as an overall “report card” solely on fire protection services, but includes water supply and dispatching. Equally important to the preceding is recognizing that the safety of our personnel must be a priority. A priority which can’t be ignored and one which should not be compromised for the sake of meeting response time objectives. As the financial status of the District improves, staffing must be a strong consideration. With annual call volume increasing at a rate 3 to 4 percent per year and given the current reality and modifications to our volunteer program, the need for additional career personnel is justified. Volunteer personnel will hopefully play a key role in the logistical needs of incidents and the District in general. The East Fork Fire Protection District Standards of Cover has been developed to translate the general needs and objectives of the district as it relates to the allocation of resources to achieve the self‐imposed standards which are drawn from several recognized sources. This document is not intended to define in specific detail the finite changes that would support the standards; however, the Committee assigned to this task has taken great effort to identify concepts and ideas which in most cases will lead to a successful compliance with said standards. To that end and in recognition of that effort, an Implementation Guide to the Standards of Cover has been developed at the administrative level drawing from the recommendations of the work group. The guide will serve as a recommended body of ideas for the administration to consider and to guide future budget development and procedural considerations and implementation. Inherent to the successful implementation of this deployment and standards model is the recognition of the need for an annual review of the plan and adjusting or “flexing” it to meet the needs of the District’s constituency. A plan such as this must be dynamic in nature in order for it to be a successful plan. In conclusion, I would like to thank the members of the committee who have work hard to produce this first revision to the original Standards of Cover. This Standards of Cover reflects the changing needs of the East Fork Fire Protection District and serves as a mechanism for constantly seeking opportunities for improvement. The plan also serves as a component document to the Douglas County Master Plan and the content duly transmitted to Douglas County for inclusion. The East Fork Fire Protection District is committed to providing the most effective services in a fiscally responsible manner and to continually evaluate our performance in the constant pursuit of improvement. What is a Standard of Cover? The term Standard of Cover is somewhat confusing to those outside of the fire service. When we discuss a “Standard of Cover,” we are referring to the standards that a fire agency can adopt to define response coverage to their community. It can also be called an emergency services deployment analysis model. Many items are considered in the development of a Standard of Cover, including but not limited to data on calls, location of calls, response time history, community expectations, whether known or perceived, and the deployment of stations, personnel and apparatus. Recommendations from a Standard of Cover include how to get the right resource to the right call in the right amount of time. To accomplish this, recommendations run the gamut from which apparatus should be at which fire stations, to establishing response standards, to determining how many personnel are needed on incident scenes, and the communications and information technology needs to accomplish the recommendations. The Standard of Cover also established the metrics for which the organization can measure its effectiveness in achieving success with the standards it chooses to emulate. East Fork applies these standards to analytically evaluate our service delivery model today and with proposed data driven modifications, our service delivery model for the future. Research shows that there is much diversity between published Standard of Covers as no two are alike, since no two communities and systems are alike. East Fork’s desire to prepare this document internally without the use of a consultant is based upon the fact that no one can understand the needs and desires of our community better than we do. We value this internal belief and vest this effort with truly talented, dedicated and intellectually qualified personnel working or associated with the district. The Standard of Cover will present our performance goals that can be measured against our actual performance metric. These goals are used during the planning phase to determine which apparatus, which personnel, which station and which service is most effective for the given task. The standards are used during the life of the document to evaluate our ability to meet the goals we imposed upon ourselves. Not meeting a self‐imposed standard should not be considered a failure. The results, if used in an appropriate manner, can provide an opportunity to discuss future needs, support a change in course, or consider additional alternatives. One other important aspect supported by the Standard of Cover is community and firefighter safety. This can be accomplished in several ways, including the identification of appropriate staffing levels, apparatus locations, and service provided. All in turn impact the level of community safety that is ultimately provided by the district. Page 1 of 101 HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OF COVER AT EAST FORK The district’s first ever adopted Strategic Plan, in 2006, established the strategic objective to develop a minimum level of community protection for the Districts using the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ “Standards of Cover” as a guide. In 2011, a group was selected by District Chief Tod F. Carlini, Volunteer Fire Chiefs Advisory Board Chair John Babcock, and East Fork Professional Firefighters’ Association President John Bellona, to develop the District’s first guide. This group started work in early 2011 and presented recommendations to the District Fire Chief. In October of 2011 the Board of Fire Commissioner aka, the Douglas County Commissioners, adopted the Standard of Cover document. The Board of County Commissioners also integrated the district’s Standard of Cover into the Douglas County Master Plan. A follow‐up report was issued in October of 2012 providing a one‐year report card on findings. An important aspect of a Standard of Cover is continuous process improvement which requires continuous system monitoring of data. Enhancements in technology have allowed for more data driven decision making and less reliance on anecdotal or emotional decision making The District’s first strategic plan reached its ten‐year life in 2016. The need and effort for a revision of the entire document was established by the District Fire Chief, with priority work to include an update to the current Standard of Cover based upon a number of items that were listed in the 2011 document.