Excerpts from patch.com:
Hinsdale trustees voted last week to buy a new pumper for $840,000, but an official questioned the village’s go-it-alone approach.
The cost would have been $550,000 two years ago, which is when the fire department first proposed replacing one of its two pumpers.
Before the vote, Village President Tom Cauley called for the fire department to share costs with departments in Clarendon Hills, Western Springs, and Oak Brook. Combined, he said, the four towns have seven pumpers.
“There must be some way we can share equipment. I’m just frustrated that we don’t do more of this,” Cauley said. “I don’t have any problems with spending this, but it’s just absurd that each village buys its own equipment for itself.”
He said pumpers are used only a few times a year for structure fires.
“We don’t live on an island,” Cauley said. “I think we should take advantage of the fact that we have surrounding communities that have lots of equipment.”
Fire Chief John Giannelli said the village had three pumpers until several years ago, with costs driving the decision to not replace one of them. He said pumpers were also needed to respond to hazardous material incidents and extrications.
The village’s vehicle policy advises replacing fire trucks after 16 years. Now, the village’s pumpers are 23 and 9 years old. Because of supply chain issues, a new pumper wouldn’t be built for at least two years.
Only one trustee voted against buying the $840,000 pumper.
“I feel strongly that we should continue to study what we can do,” he said. “I can’t believe that four small municipalities that have a total population of less than $50,000 have all these fire trucks. That’s just bizarre.”
In 2021, Cauley waded into a debate in Clarendon Hills about whether that village should replace its ladder truck, which was expected to cost more than $1 million.
Cauley said he wondered whether Clarendon Hills needed such a truck when Hinsdale had one.
Clarendon Hills officials were considering not replacing the ladder truck. But after a local outcry, they decided to buy one.
thanks Rob
#1 by The DH on April 19, 2023 - 6:43 PM
Tom, Clarendon Hills is all part-time/POC. Hinsdale is a full-time IAFF/AFFI union department. In order to share manning, that most likely is a contractual issue. The crux of the issue is this politician doesn’t fully understand what we do and why departments need certain pieces of equipment. We need to educate our politicians.
Hinsdale is full of mcmansions, and with the closest two trucks being POC, and then Oak Brook having their own issues with staffing and getting a truck out the door, having a staffed truck in town is justifiable.
Hinsdale has one reserve engine. Clarendon Hills has no reserves, staffing of 3 but the POCs get the other rigs out for fires. Western Springs has 2 engines and a truck, so no reserves either.
#2 by Andy on April 19, 2023 - 4:43 PM
Clarendon Hills only staffs 3 people a day as a jump company for the ambulance and fire vehicle. The remainder of their staffing comes from home.
#3 by Tom on April 19, 2023 - 12:04 PM
Too bad the two towns couldn’t of figure something out with sharing a truck. I don’t know what Hinsdale’s staffing is, but personally I felt the best thing would be for each Hinsdale & Claredon Hills to staff with 2 ff’s each for a 4 man truck company to respond to both towns in addition to their engine companies. Utilizing Claredon hills truck
as a spare. No reduction in manpower, each town committing 2 ff’s to a truck. It’s pretty hard to justify spare apparatus, specialty apparatus and administration needed to run a 1 station department.
#4 by Scott on April 19, 2023 - 8:26 AM
River Forest ladder truck was purchased with a grant. Had River Forest not gotten that grant the village wouldn’t have spent 800,000 for a new ladder truck. If not for the grant the both towns would probably still be sharing.
#5 by MABAS 21 on April 17, 2023 - 3:56 PM
Pat, I am aware of all of that. My question was, how is it working out for the troops at both departments? As someone said, the Oak Park and River Forest shared arrangement was a failure.
Also when Glenview receives their new truck, are they getting rid of the shared truck and making the current Truck 14 the new reserve?
#6 by Pat on April 17, 2023 - 9:19 AM
MABAS21….So Glenview has a frontline truck, their reserve truck is used by Northfield as their frontline. If Glenview truck is down, then they grab the shared truck and Northfield runs their Squad/Engine frontline. Nice way to keep a reserve truck as owning 2 trucks(frontline and reserve) is expensive. Not sure how the guys/girls like it, but that’s what they do.
#7 by DaveyB on April 15, 2023 - 11:22 AM
Homewood and Flossmoor did that in the mid to late 80’s. They shared a 105′ aerial and Homewood’s 65′ snorkel. Both trucks were labelled “Homewood and Flossmoor”, and carried both departments’ call numbers. They were even listed on the Box Cards of the day with both designations, and the department with the aerial would get called.
#8 by MABAS 21 on April 14, 2023 - 2:50 PM
How is the sharing of the Glenview/ Northfield truck going?
#9 by Paul on April 14, 2023 - 2:13 PM
Talk to anybody from Oak Park and River Forest about “shared ” rigs there little experiment was a cluster
#10 by Tom Foley on April 13, 2023 - 9:30 PM
You could really crack open many of the MABAS10 departments and apply this. Because we do this here, my thoughts are this:
If consolidation into, say a district, is not going to happen, each department should would maintain a front line engine or truck for suppression. I would go so far as to say the departments that receive a truck on mutual aide should be sure they are reciprocating or else pay into the cost of neighboring departments for the usually larger cost of a truck.
Where I think ton of streamlining can take place is in the reserve apparatus. To the best of my knowledge, each of these departments is keeping at least one reserve engine. That’s A LOT of idle equipment and dollars. I do think sharing could occur on the reserve apparatus front. Last I checked, La Grange has a frontline, staffed engine and two spares. They are lucky to have 5 between the ambo and engine on a shift. Those two spares spend a lot of time idle. Sometimes run mutual aid and available for call backs. (Key being, sometimes.) What if La Grange, LGPK, and Western Springs shared a spare or two?
#11 by Bill Post on April 13, 2023 - 6:59 PM
Jim you have a great point and there are still too many fire departments in this area that don’t use what is also known as the “seamless response” approach where even though you might have several seperate fire deparments they all work together as if they were one large fire department and they would all use automatic and Not “Mutual Aide”. That is what the fire departments in the Phoenix Arizona Metro Area do and they their running distticts are based on the nearest fire companies and stations which cross the towns jurisdictional lines so that you will always get the nearest available companies dispatched even if they are quartered in another town. In the Phoenix/Mesa Metro Area I believe that there are only two dispatch centers which do the dispatching for between 10 and 20 firedeparments and they all work together as if in effect they were the same fire department. While some fire departments in the Chicago Metro Area do have automatic aid agreements that is still limited in many cases.
#12 by Jim on April 13, 2023 - 4:55 PM
I think the problem is looking at the response areas as separate instead of looking at the new response area as a whole. What this mayor is talking about is no different that what major cities do for the different neighborhoods it serves. Chicago doesn’t look at what each neighborhood has but rather looks at the total response area and then locates stations, apparatus, personnel and equipment. In the case of Hinsdale, Clarendon Hills, Western Springs and Oak Brook, each is looking at their individual response areas instead of the entire area. If they were to look at the entire area, they could place stations, apparatus and personnel that would serve the area better. Maybe instead of 6 stations, 4 would be adequate but some of those stations could be double (engine and truck) stations and the staffing of apparatus could be improved because of reallocating personnel accordingly. If departments came together like this, MABAS would not be needed.
#13 by Alan Fricker on April 13, 2023 - 12:20 PM
If this local politician is so concerned about sharing equipment, then why not suggest the MABAS divisions become their own fire protection districts?
#14 by Scott on April 13, 2023 - 6:05 AM
Hinsdale attempting to make data driven decisions. I’m sure the feelings of the fire service got in the way. Hinsdale, Clarendon Hills and Western Springs should just consolidate. They all share a small foot print and similar demographics.
#15 by Mike on April 12, 2023 - 8:24 PM
Nobody cares about Hinsdale or their elected officials opinions and after having a firefighter commit suicide because of a piece of shit company officer, it sounds like their priorities are in the wrong places.
#16 by Craig Mack on April 12, 2023 - 7:32 PM
I mean….he’s not wrong….