When Larry Collins took over as Ann Arbor fire chief last year, he made it a priority to get better statistics about the AAFD’s work (“Beyond Fire Lore,” April 2015). Now, he says, “I think we have [them].”
The data confirms that modern firefighters don’t spend much time fighting fires. In 2013 through 2015, the AAFD handled 19,931 calls. Fifty-six percent were for emergency medical service, to which the AAFD responds along with Huron Valley Ambulance. Another 16 percent were “good-intent service calls”–for instance, Collins explains in an email, “sending an engine to an elderly person’s house to help them get their spouse back into their bed or chair that they have fallen out of.” Another 14 percent were false alarms. Ten percent were miscellaneous other calls, and just 4 percent were actual fires. That’s 771 fires in three years, an average of twenty-one a month. They caused a total of $1.3 million in damage.
Drawing on the data, Collins is wrapping up work on a strategic plan for the department. “We engaged the community at large. We engaged the firefighters–those who wanted to participate–and brought in the same consultant that is doing the city’s strategic plan.”
The strategic plan, in turn, “may recommend that we do a fire station master plan,” says Collins. “You need to take a look at where your stations are, how quickly they cover an area, what the community believes that response time should be.” Aside from mutual aid, cancelled, and nonemergency calls, the department typically gets a truck to the scene in under four minutes.
Talk of closing or moving stations is emotionally charged, because people often equate visibility of stations to speed of response. A few years back, a proposal to improve response time by consolidating staff in fewer stations generated so much heat that then-mayor John Hieftje pulled the plug before it even reached council. But Collins points out that there’s another factor to consider. “Our stations are getting old,” he says. “Some have reached [the end of their] useful life. There needs to be a replacement plan.”
The number of firefighters is another emotionally charged topic. Does the AAFD need more people? “That will be in the report,” the chief smiles.
Whatever the report recommends about staffing, Collins will be doing a lot of hiring. “We anticipate some retirements over the next three years or so,” he says. “You might be looking at upwards of twenty,” close to a quarter of the department.
The chief isn’t worried about filling those jobs. “There are folks in the entire southeast part of Michigan who’d like to be in this department,” he says.