Orange County Mutual Aid

[BM234 2]

Scenario: Dept A has a small house fire, they call a fast team and Dept B and C to the scene. Dept B has adequate staffing in quarters but Dept C doesn't. Dept C requests Dept D for coverage. Now Dept D has no manpower and requests Dept E, and so on and so on.

I hear this happening all to often lately, not just during the day. But when does it end? The only solution I can think of would be to have departments stand by in their own quarters. How busy is that first or second department and what are the chances of them A) getting a serious second call in the district or getting a second call that actually requires FD response (battery rescue at an mva, ems run with ambulance responding)?

Just some thoughts. And maybe spark some ideas as to how to curtail stuff like this in the future.

[SageVigiles 1,194]

I don't know what you're asking, can you elaborate?

[BM234 2]

More specifically, one day a department on the west side of the county had a house fire. About a dozen departments were involved in mutual aid and coverage, only 3 or 4 were actually on scene. I was mainly adressing manpower issues. If one department sends a rig to cover with 5-6 guys on it, how much manpower is left in their own district? Why not just standby in their own quarters to stop the chain reaction of mutual aid?

[16fire5 693]

There is no simple answer to these questions. The standby in quarters may work if the response time to the areas being covered is reasonable. So if Dept A B and C are commited to a working fire and B's station is somewhat in the middle of all three putting a standby in B's station to cover all three makes the most sense. There was a similar thread recently where some posters complained about relocating into fire stations that get infrequent calls and they thought it was not necessary. If the next closest resources are 20 minutes away then I would say they need a standby. Also in many cases the relocated units then become the next due units on additional alarms.

As always a county or regional system works better where a central dispatch center has the authorization and responsiblity to maintain coverage by relocations.

[ks1980 36]

Well when I was a volly back in Westchester, from what I remember upon transmission of the 10-75 mutual aid was called in for FAST, additional manpower, and coverage to backfill.

That I always thought was kinda good, but you can definitely deplete an area and create a void of coverage. Possibly causing a unsafe situation if another hot job comes in. Yes the chances are small but can happen. And, as pointed out then you have the question of how much actuall manpower is responding and if a crew can even be assembled. ( this more of a issue with volunteer dept)

Well moving to here in Central Oregon, my dept and our neighboring depts, have a automatic aid policy. This I feel is slight improvement. Basically when a possible structure fire is toned out so is an engine from our neighbor depts. With this we know of any manpower isssues and can place other units in stand by if needed.

Well I don't know if there is a right or wrong solution to this issue. And I guess it's just what ever works for your community.