Valley fire, rescue calls leap

Thursday, July 1, 2004 | 11:02 a.m.

Fire and rescue responses by Southern Nevada's two largest fire departments outpaced population growth last year.

Clark County says the number of calls for firefighters grew at a rate that was more than double the population increase rate in 2003, and in Las Vegas the rate of calls was more than triple the rate of the city's population growth, according to annual reports released by the fire departments this month.

The population increase in the valley drove the 10 percent increase in calls, especially in the booming west and northwest areas and along the Strip, where tourists and others have an ever-burgeoning need for emergency services, fire department spokesmen said.

And with Las Vegas firefighters responding to 31,024 calls -- everything from fires and medical emergencies to bomb scares and spills of hazardous materials -- through May of this year and the county responding to 40,185 calls during the same period, both departments are on track to log annual increases similar to last year's.

The annual reports for 2003 have come out at one of the busiest times of the year for valley fire departments. This week, for example, there have been three fires in Clark County that officials believe were started by fireworks.

The 2003 report for the Las Vegas fire department said total calls increased 9.9 percent in 2003 to 72,116, including 2,880 for fire responses and 64,876 for medical. The county report found that total calls last year increased 9.3 percent to 91,160, including 3,218 for fire responses and 66,078 for medical.

Meanwhile, the city's population increased just 2.7 percent to 535,392 between July 2002 and July 2003, while the county population increased 4 percent to 1.64 million during the same period, according to city and county records.

Fire deaths in both jurisdictions, despite the growth in population and calls, decreased by one, to 11, in 2003, the reports said. Experts attributed that to the opening of four new stations in the western end of the valley -- three within the city limits -- which contributed to a reduction in response times.

"Over the last 10 years our call volume growth has increased 7 to 10 percent each year, but the amazing thing is that until 2001 we had just 10 stations to respond to them," said Deputy Las Vegas Chief Ken Riddle, who began his local career in 1978 as a firefighter.

"We now have 15 stations -- a 50 percent increase in just the last four years," Riddle said. "That has meant a reduction in response times."

Between June 2003 and this month, the average response time by the city of Las Vegas dipped four seconds for emergency medical responses to 5 minutes and 50 seconds, and decreased 12 seconds for fire responses, also 5 minutes, 50 seconds.

The county fire department, which covers a huge region stretching from the urban valley to Stateline to Laughlin to the rural towns, had an average response time of 6 minutes and 17 seconds per call.

The national standard is eight minutes for the time that elapses between the call to 911 and arrival at the location where help is needed, Riddle said, noting the city fire department beat that mark 85.6 percent of the time last year.

The opening of three new Northwest Las Vegas stations -- No. 43 at 6420 Smoke Ranch Road, No. 44 at 7701 W. Washington Ave. and No. 45 at 3821 N. Fort Apache Road -- in the first two months of 2003 played a big role in cutting response times, which saved lives, he said.

Fire fatalities in the city spiked to 10 three years ago, fell to three in 2002 and doubled to six in 2003. The county had nine each in 2001 and 2002 but just five last year.

This year, through May, the county and city each have had four fire deaths, officials said.

Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach agreed with Riddle that, in addition to spreading the word with effective public education programs, building fire stations in the rural areas as quick as possible is key to saving lives.

"We have to concentrate on putting the resources closer to the incidents and that includes putting stations closer to where people are going to move in this ever-expanding valley," Leinbach said.

"For example, the developers of Southern Highlands (in Southwest Southern Nevada) came to us with what they planned to build and we started plans to build Station 65 there. The closest station would have been Station 24 at Blue Diamond Road, and the response times from there would have been unacceptable."

This year, Clark County will open one more station, Leinbach said. The city plans to reopen the refurbished station at West Charleston Boulevard and Hinson Road in September.

The county will add 18 new firefighter-paramedic positions this year, Leinbach said. The city will not add new positions but plans to hire about a dozen firefighter-paramedics to fill vacated positions, Riddle said.

While growth is playing a factor in responses, there also have been increases in the need for fire and emergency medical services in tourism corridors such as the Strip.

"We, of course, ask people their towns of residences as part of the information we gather to treat them, but we don't break it out statistically whether a person is a local or a tourist," Leinbach said.

Riddle said that the city used to keep separate statistics regarding responses to tourists but discontinued that practice about four years ago because the department found that it served no purpose to maintain that data. At that time, he said, about 17 percent of total calls were to assist tourists.

Even without those statistics, however, the breakdown of responses by stations in the annual reports supports that in areas frequented by tourists the need for medical and fire services are great.

In the county last year, Station No. 18 on Flamingo Road, which responds to Strip calls, had 18,120 total responses, while none of the other 23 county stations had greater than 8,200 responses. Just seven others had more than 5,000 total calls. Station 18 had 5,047 medical calls alone, the report said.

In the city, three downtown stations -- No. 1 at Casino Center and Bonanza Road, No. 4 at Charleston Boulevard and 15th Street and No. 8 at Mohave Road and Bonanza -- had 40 percent of all of the city's fire and medical calls, Riddle said.

The Rescue 1 ambulance team responded to 8,255 emergency medical calls, while none of the other rescue units responded to more than 5,550 calls during 2003, the annual report said.

Fire officials also noted that the county increased fire inspections last year to 65,510, up 49 percent.

Leinbach said the increase can be attributed to the addition of seven full-time inspectors two years ago to try to keep up with the boom in construction. The county must sign off on safety features such as alarms, smoke detectors and sprinklers in commercial buildings before they can open.

"The goal is to ensure that structures are up to minimal and uniform standards for safety," Leinbach said. "We want to eliminate or reduce the hazards. The construction community takes these safety measures seriously."

Riddle agreed that his inspectors generally find that business owners make good efforts to have their buildings up to code when inspectors arrive.

"Usually the violations are not bad enough to have to close the businesses," he said. "When there is a change of ownership of an older business we get in there and make sure they are complying with current codes.

"Also we follow up troubled areas," Riddle said. "When two people died in a residential health care facility fire, we looked at every one of those type of businesses in the city and found them to be in compliance."

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