Excerpts from the journal-topics.com:
After a comprehensive study by outside consultants with input from fire personnel, village trustees instructed the village manager and fire chief to implement changes to fire department operations at the meeting on Feb. 2. One of the more significant changes would lead to the reallocation of resources from Station 13 at 831 E. Lake Ave. ultimately leading to the permanent closure of the firehouse.
Other recommendations including instituting medical call prioritization protocol for public safety dispatchers to ask targeted questions allowing them to dispatch a single ambulance to a minor call or more resources to a major call. Currently, an ambulance and engine respond to every medically-related EMS call in Glenview. Several equipment upgrades are needed to bring the department to the point where EMS medical prioritization could be fully implemented.
Station 13 opened in February 2004. It was closed from April to July 2020 because of state COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and was closed again in December, reopening just last week. While Station 13 was closed, calls were rerouted to Station 6 at 1215 Waukegan Rd. Village officials said during the closure, calls were handled without a loss in service levels and said closing Station 13 would result in saving $1.25 million annually.
The study looked at all Glenview fire station call volumes along with their call volume capacity and found that, while Station 6 was one of the most heavily utilized, 55% of current available workload capacity is unused.
The report said, “fire suppression apparatus are on calls an average of 2.47 hours per 24-hour shift,” but found “the underutilization of Station 13’s unit (43 minutes in a 24-hour period) creates opportunities for further evaluation of additional efficiency measures.”
Stations 13 and 14 were built and opened at the same time in July 2004, at a combined cost of $4 million. Station 14 is in The Glen on Patriot Boulevard. Senior village staff felt the two stations were needed at the time. Since then, Station 6 was relocated from Glenview Road to the former village hall site on Waukegan Road, decreasing response times to areas east.
Trustees looked at several cost-saving options besides reallocating resources from Station 13, including leaving an ambulance there, which would save $200,000 over 20 years. Another option would have been to expand Station 13’s service area, which would have evened the workload between Stations 13 and 6.
Other options included having a jump company respond to both fire and ambulance calls out of Station 13 or out of Station 8 between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., or on a 24-hour basis. Using a jump company out of Station 13 would have cost $100,000 in one-time equipment costs. Using a Station 8 jump company for the 12-hour shift would have no financial impact. Using a Station 8 jump company 24-hours a day would save an estimated $350,000 per year.
Another option discussed involved mutual aid where fire departments can be dispatched from neighboring communities to most incidents, and fire units from other communities can be used to backfill stations so no one community’s resources are too thinly stretched to respond to multiple incidents at once.
Automatic aid agreements are currently in place for pre-planned responses to specific types of calls and locations with the villages of Northbrook and Northfield.
The study showed mutual aid calls from 2018 and how much Glenview either gave or received resources on calls from other departments. The outliers were Northbrook, to which Glenview gave resources on 145 calls but only received resources from Northbrook on 10 calls, and Northfield, to which Glenview gave aid on 113 calls and received 11. In contrast, Glenview gave resources to the North Maine Fire District 38 times and received them 38 times. Glenview gave Mount Prospect aid 17 times, receiving it five times in return. It was noted Mount Prospect has a station 1.4 miles from Glenview and said both communities could benefit from an automatic aid agreement.
The report recommended implementing a GPS system, allowing dispatchers to know the precise location of each fire unit, which could allow them to dispatch the closest unit rather than from the closest fire station
thanks Dennis
