Contracting Urged for Fire Service

Breaking up the Los Angeles Fire Department would reduce its flexibility and effectiveness in dealing with major brush fires and high-rise blazes, a top fire official warned at a City Hall hearing on secession Tuesday.

Deputy Chief John Callahan said the most logical arrangement to maintain quality would be for any new cities, such as in the San Fernando Valley or the Harbor area, to contract with the Los Angeles city department.

“To separate out pieces [of the department] can be problematic, in that what we have now is a system that is able to respond to emergencies everywhere in the city,” Callahan said.

Dividing up the department’s six helicopters, for instance, would hinder efforts to respond to calls that require a large air operation, he said.

“When the brush starts burning out in Chatsworth, we have six helicopters to throw at that,” he said. When conditions are ripe for brush fires, the city routinely sends 10 firetrucks from other parts of the city to the Valley to be on standby in case of an outbreak, he said.

Callahan conceded that emergency response times in the San Fernando Valley are greater than in the rest of the city, which is a major impetus driving political secession by the Valley from Los Angeles.

“There is no question that the response time shows a lack of adequate services compared to what other cities provide,” said Valley VOTE Chairman Richard Close, whose organization has pushed the secession process.

The hearing was held by consultants for the Local Agency Formation Commission, which is studying the financial feasibility of secession.

Close said mutual aid agreements such as those between Los Angeles and surrounding cities would solve the problem of providing additional resources for major incidents.

A mutual aid agreement does not guarantee service and requires coordination between different agencies, which could slow the emergency response, Callahan said.

“When those resources in the Valley are stretched thin and need help, we may not be able to get out there as quickly if it is a mutual aid situation than if we have one seamless city department,” Callahan said in an interview after the hearing.

The initial breakup plan submitted by Valley VOTE called for the Valley to have control over its fire services, but Close said the group will wait for the LAFCO study before deciding which is the best approach.

Callahan said the option for the new cities that “seems to me to be the most logical is to contract with the Los Angeles Fire Department. . . . We have been providing that long-term and, I think, with a high degree of satisfaction.”

The goal is to reach 90% of emergencies in five minutes, but citywide, the department reaches 90% of emergencies in 5.3 minutes; in the Valley, the crews arrive in 5.8 minutes, or 30 seconds longer, Callahan said.

The geographical size of the Valley is to blame for the longer response times, he said. Hiring more paramedics, building more fire stations and putting more ambulances in Valley fire stations should reduce response times, he added.

Tuesday’s hearing was one of a series being held with the heads of city departments to help consultants identify potential problems in dividing city assets and services.

The Valley has 35 of the city’s 102 fire stations and about 36% of its population.

Callahan identified several issues that would need consideration, including the fact that there are four fire stations along Mulholland Drive--the proposed southern border for the new Valley city--that serve both the Valley and the area to the south.

The study of Valley and Harbor cityhoods is expected to be completed in time for the secession proposals to be placed on the November 2002 ballot if LAFCO determines that the breakup will hurt neither the new cities nor what is left of Los Angeles.