By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer
March 15, 2008
In an effort to cut down on unwarranted high speed responses and the accidents that can result, fire commanders have adopted new guidelines on how many fire trucks need to race to some fire and emergency calls.
"The goal is to cut down on unnecessary high speed responses," Greenwich Assistant Chief Robert Kick said. "If you look at a lot of the departments around the country, they are limiting the number of additional apparatus which are responding at high speed."
The department will evaluate whether the new guidelines being followed has any impact on reducing accidents, Kick said.
Fire engines are sent to calls in two different ways in Greenwich, Code 10 and Code 20, Kick said.
During Code 10 calls, the engine drives with the flow of traffic without lights and sirens, while a Code 20 involves activating sirens and driving at high speed.
How many fire engines respond at top speed to any given call is laid out in operating procedures and depends partly on the urgency and magnitude of a fire or other emergency, Kick said. Those operating procedures have been modified to avoid sending units at high speed unnecessarily.
Except for the downtown and North Street fire houses, town fire stations are staffed with two-man crews, requiring multiple engines to be deployed to emergency calls, Kick said.
Under federal law, a minimum of four firefighters must be at the scene of a fire before firefighting efforts begin.
Last year, the Board of Estimate & Taxation asked fire officials to find ways to cut down on the number of fire department accidents, which can cause damage to both public and private property and in some cases appeared avoidable. Since 2006, the department has made efforts to curb accidents by emphasizing defensive driving techniques during responses and reviewing accidents to determine if drivers made mistakes, fire officials said.
While the number of fire department accidents dropped from 40 in the 2004-2005 fiscal year to 24 in 2006-2007, according to town statistics, a continual effort to reduce fire department accidents is needed, Larry Simon, a member of the BET's audit committee, said.
Fire engines are more accident-prone because of their size and the number of false alarms they respond to, Simon said.
"A lot of it was caused by the number of calls we're making," Simon said. "Also, sometimes you don't have the right equipment and when these big vehicles get in accidents they cause more damage than when a pickup truck hits the curb." Volunteer firefighters support the new policy and believe it will help reduce the probability of costly accidents and repairs, Jerry Cotrone, president of the Greenwich Volunteer Firefighters Association, said.
"We have to be as responsible as we can in not causing accidents," Cotrone said.
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