We first wrote about the West Suburban Fire/Rescue Alliance in March of last year. After a year of implementation, the Daily Herald has an interview with Carol Stream Fire Chief Rick Kolomay about the program.

Nearly a year after its debut, an alliance of firefighting agencies in DuPage County is lauding improvements in its responses to emergencies and outlining more ways to share resources.

The West Suburban Fire/Rescue Alliance includes the Wheaton Fire Department and fire protection districts of Carol Stream, Winfield and West Chicago. It’s not a consolidation, but the group aims to build cooperation and reduce costs.

The alliance already has adopted uniform protocols for firefighters and conducts monthly multidepartment training. Now, it’s reviewing ambulance fees in each community.

Although data is not quite a year old, officials said figures from DU-COMM, a regional service that handles 911 calls for the four municipalities, indicate emergency response times have been significantly reduced since the alliance formed.

In cases of general alarm calls, the time it took for all units — three engines, three trucks, two ambulances and five command officers — to arrive at structure fires dropped an average of almost five minutes, they said.

Officials say the faster responses stem from DU-COMM refining a computer-aided dispatch system and a procedure developed by the alliance called “closest station response.”

Pre-alliance depletion policies constrained the availability of equipment, officials said.

“We said basically we’ll only send you one of what we have because we have to protect the rest of town,” Carol Stream Chief and alliance President Rick Kolomay said. “We weren’t getting all the resources to the fire as quickly as we should because we had to skip towns to keep reaching for one of these and one of those because that’s all they could give us.”

Now, the alliance also fills voids when a chief or deputy chief, fire engine, ladder truck and ambulance deploy to the headquarters station of a community with a working fire to plan for any additional emergencies that could arise.

Kolomay said the group continues to study how emergency calls break down in each town. He also left open the possibility of the closest fire station responding in all cases.

Pre-alliance depletion policies constrained the availability of equipment, officials said.

“We said basically we’ll only send you one of what we have because we have to protect the rest of town,” Carol Stream Chief and alliance President Rick Kolomay said. “We weren’t getting all the resources to the fire as quickly as we should because we had to skip towns to keep reaching for one of these and one of those because that’s all they could give us.”

Now, the alliance also fills voids when a chief or deputy chief, fire engine, ladder truck and ambulance deploy to the headquarters station of a community with a working fire to plan for any additional emergencies that could arise.

Kolomay said the group continues to study how emergency calls break down in each town. He also left open the possibility of the closest fire station responding in all cases.

The entire article is HERE.

Thanks Chris

Tags: automatic aid, Carol Stream FD, Carol Stream Fire Chief Rick Kolomay, Carol Stream Fire Department, Carol Stream Fire District, closest unit response, DU-COMM, mutual aid, West Chicago Fire Department, West Chicago Fire Protection District, West Suburban Fire Rescue Alliance, Wheaton Fire Department, Winfield Fire Protection District