Fire departments test smaller, quicker vehicles

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“Why did you bring a great big fire engine to a medical call?”

That’s a question veteran firefighter-paramedic Dave Bridges is used to hearing.

“On a busy day in La Center, we might get half a dozen calls,” Bridges says. “About 80 percent of those are medical calls.”

When firefighters arrive in their giant, red fire engine to a non-fire call, people get confused. They called for an ambulance, right? So, why is there a fire engine in front of their house?

Firefighters are first-responders. They have paramedics and EMTs on their crews. And, because they’re often located in the heart of a community, they usually beat ambulance crews to the scene of a medical emergency or local traffic accident.

“It’s a matter of public perception,” explains Clark County Fire & Rescue (CCFR) Battalion Chief Tim Dawdy. “A lot of people don’t understand why we brought a big engine to a medical call.”

It’s a valid question, especially in a rural area, where windy roads and narrow driveways can be extremely difficult to navigate in a bulky fire engine. After a while, firefighters and the public they serve start to wonder if a smaller vehicle wouldn’t be a better option.

“That’s one of the reasons why we’re doing this study,” Dawdy says of the CFR's recent implementation of a Quick Response Vehicle (QRV) test study project. “We are responding to the citizens’ questions.”

To determine if smaller, quicker vehicles are better for responding to medical calls and traffic accidents, CCFR has implemented the QRV study at the La Center and Battle Ground fire stations. For the past couple months, firefighters at both of these stations have used switched from fire engine to brush rig – a smaller vehicle typically used to fight season brush fires – depending on the type of call coming through the 9-1-1 system.

“We’re collecting data until June,” Dawdy says.

The study is testing for a couple of things. First, fire chiefs want to know if the smaller vehicles have faster response times. Secondly, they want to see if there is a cost-savings associated with using the brush rigs instead of the fire engines.

“Intuitively, you would think that these vehicles are going to be faster, because they’re able to get to places that the engine can’t in the rural areas … and maneuver through traffic at our busiest station in Battle Ground … and you would imagine that the cost would be less. For instance, replacing a windshield in the brush rig costs about $200, but in the engine it costs $2,000,” Dawdy explains. “But we don’t want to rely on our intuition. We want data. That’s why we’re testing in La Center and Battle Ground.”

When people think about firefighters, they instantly think about, well, fighting fires. But the firefighting profession has changed over the past couple of decades. Today, firefighters are much more likely to respond to medical emergency calls and traffic accidents than to actual structure fires.



“About 80 percent of the calls are medical emergencies,” Dawdy says.

In fact, at stations like La Center, people who call 9-1-1 for a medical emergency at their home are much more likely to see a firefighter arrive before the ambulance crew.

“We’re here, in the community, so we’re going to typically have a faster response time than (the ambulance companies),” Dawdy says. “And we have a well-equipped, very robust crew here. Dave is a very experienced paramedic, so people are getting the best.”

Bridges, a firefighter-paramedic who has been with the La Center station since 2008, says people used to ask him about the fire engine all the time, but that they don’t question the smaller, truck-like brush rig.

The fire crews still have a few months’ worth of data to collect on the QRVs, but Bridges and Aaron Huntington, the two full-time firefighters at the La Center fire station, say the brush rig has been able to navigate terrain the fire engine couldn’t.

“We have a lot of windy roads and narrow driveways,” Huntington says. “There are some places where we’ve had to walk in.”

“On our first call after the switch, we went to a place that was up a very windy road,” Bridges adds. “The brush rig got there without any problems … the engine probably would have made it, too, but we probably would have scratched it getting there.”

Since both Battle Ground and La Center already had brush rigs at their fire stations, the QRV test is cost-efficient. The crews simply removed the rigs’ typical brush fire equipment and replaced it with medical equipment.

The testing crews have experienced a couple of minor problems, so far, including the fact that the brush rigs are a lot tighter than the fire engines and can be uncomfortable to ride around in.

“It seats four, sort of,” Bridges jokes, opening the La Center brush rig’s seating compartment, which looks like it has limited leg room for the firefighters who don’t call “shotgun” fast enough.

Another minor problem is the issue of gear. Since the fire stations are only testing the QRVs right now, spending $1,200 to $1,500 per firefighter for a second set of turnout gear – coats, helmets, boots and other supplies – wouldn’t be cost-effective. That means that the firefighters must transport their gear from one vehicle to the other throughout their shift. If the fire department decides, after the QRV data is collected, that brush rigs or SUVs are a good idea for medical calls, then they would discuss keeping two sets of gear (one for the fire engine and one for the smaller response vehicle), Dawdy says.

For now, though, the brush rigs seem to be working for the firefighters. Because they are used for brush fires, the rigs come equipped with a small water supply and hoses, so firefighters can use the vehicle to fight smaller fires such as car fires or garage fires.

“Right now, we’re focused on getting really good data,” Dawdy says. “After we collect our data, we’ll have a better idea of what we should do.”