Unified Government Commissioner Mike Kane on Thursday night called for more fire protection in the Piper area.
Kane made his remarks at the 5 p.m. special session of the UG Commission.
Kane cited a memo that went out from Fire Chief Mike Callahan on Sept. 4 that changed the practice of automatically sending a pumper from another station to Fire Station No. 8 at 123rd and Leavenworth Road whenever its pumper is out on a call.
According to the memo, another pumper would be sent to the station when Pumper 8 was out of service, leaves for training, leaves for the repair shops or is out on an emergency response for more than 30 minutes.
“What bothers me most,” Kane said, “is in excess of 30 minutes.”
He used his own experience with an emergency last year as an example. After he called because he was experiencing some symptoms similar to a stroke, it took the Fire Department eight minutes to reach his house. Then it took six minutes to load him into an emergency vehicle, then 18 minutes to reach the University of Kansas Health System hospital, he said.
But if there had been no emergency vehicle available at the Piper fire station, that might have added a half-hour, he said.
“Add a half-hour to that if I was a stroke victim,” he said, and if it had taken another 30 minutes to reach him, “I might not have been so lucky,” he said.
Kane said after he complained to the UG administrator and the fire chief about the memo, this was changed to have the dispatcher on duty determine which company will be sent out.
Kane asked all the commissioners to go out and drive around the Piper area to get an idea of the time involved in covering it.
In 1995, there were 5,650 people in the Piper area, but in 2017 there were about 15,980 people, he said.
“That is a huge increase, and we have a pole barn fire station,” Kane said.
While much of Kansas City, Kansas, is within a 4-minute response time of a fire station, Kane said his house and much of Piper is not within 4 minutes now. Adding another 30 minutes is something they don’t have time for, he said.
“We who are west of 99th Street, north of Parallel, we pay over $13 million in taxes,” Kane said. “We have a pole barn that saves our people’s lives, now we want to wait 30 minutes to save people’s lives.”
Chief Callahan explained that he had been meeting with personnel in the fire stations and also with command staff to discuss the automatic change from station 4 to station 8 when the pumper is out. He said he collected data that indicated an automatic change wasn’t required.
“Prior to my order, if Pumper 8 left quarters to go 50 yards for a brush fire, Pumper 4 was dispatched to fill, leaving a gap in Pumper 4’s area,” Callahan said at the meeting Sept. 27. Station 4 is near 81st and Leavenworth Road.
The professional dispatchers in the dispatch center have the capability to assess a situation, he said. If Pumper 8 leaves and goes to a house fire, the dispatchers can send a company out there and not wait 30 minutes, he said. If Pumper 8 goes to a brush fire, they don’t have to pull another company to go there, he added.
However, Kane still said he wanted better fire coverage for Piper.
Kane reiterated his earlier statements that the UG is dragging its feet on building the new Piper fire station at Hutton Road and Leavenworth Road.
Fire officials at the Sept. 17 UG meeting said the completion date of the new fire station could be March of 2020. But in April of this year, officials said the completion date could be 2019.
Kane said the completion date is almost four years from when funding for the project was budgeted. Officials said at the Sept. 17 meeting that the project could run $3.6 million.
Chief Callahan said he is planning to improve fire coverage very soon in Piper by replacing the really old pumper truck with a foam truck currently in use at another station, and turning it into a tanker.
Then, he plans to meet next week with fire chiefs in Leavenworth County to determine if they can provide auto aid into the northwest corner of the Piper area, he said at the Sept. 27 meeting. Auto aid is when neighbors on the border respond to a call here as if they were part of the Fire Department here.
Commissioner Melissa Bynum agreed with Commissioner Kane that this area needs fire coverage, and while she was not sure what the solution should be, she said whatever agreement that can be put in place for coverage while the pumper is out on call has to happen as soon as possible.
See an earlier story at https://wyandotteonline.com/ideas-discussed-for-building-and-remodeling-kck-fire-stations/.