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Permalink Reply by Chris on January 9, 2009 at 1:17pm

well population really doesn't have a lot to do with ISO standards its mostly area of the city, engines vary as well.

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on January 10, 2009 at 6:37pm

There aren't any international 'standards' Shams, I think there are just too many differences world wide. (When you see people here mention 'ISO', it doesn't mean the International Standards Organisation, they're talking about a USA only organisation) Mostly I think it would depend on method of funding, population, overall living and housing standards, that sort of thing. Risk factors combined with population and funding might is another way. And another consideration? Culture. For instance, Australia and the USA are very similar in some ways, but with huge differences in the way we look at the need for, the structure of and the fire fighting methods of our fire services.

So. A city of around 100,000 people? A couple of our provincial cities have maybe 150,000 people with say four fire stations, one in each case having career staff (one crew of three FF's on duty) to support the mainly volunteer Brigades. The smaller stations would have one or two appliances (fire engines) the larger three or four. My own Brigade is in an outer metropolitan suburb, about 20,000 people in the area, two pumpers and one support truck and about 35 active volunteers (no career).

There are two fire services in my State, one all career covering the city and inner suburbs, the other mainly volunteer covering the remaining suburbs and the rest of the State.

I hope I helped more than confused!

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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on January 11, 2009 at 5:02pm

That's an easy one to answer...in almost every case.....NOT ENOUGH.....LOL....Over 1000,000 firefighters in the US....3 out of 4 are volunteers....Stay safe....Keep your head down (hear its getting a little tense in that part of the world again).....Paul

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on January 11, 2009 at 7:00pm

Thanks Stijn - that's interesting. It sounds to me like your town has very good coverage for both fire and ambulance generally. Though what is the area covered by the Brigade, with these surrounding towns, and how far off is mutual aid? (I have a personal dislike of combining fire and ambulance, which is fine as we don't combine the two here!)

With us, when our career FF's are on their off days, they can't be called back - they can be asked to cover a short shift, but aren'tt called back for individual jobs. Not normally anyway! Our sister service I think works the same way. My service relies on volunteer availability to cover incidents. We run automatic support (at least two stations respond to structure fires for instance) which helps to ensure that there are enough people on scene.

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Permalink Reply by Rob on January 12, 2009 at 4:37am

ISO is the main guiding force in the US. There are multiple factors...
Polulation served
Sq Miles served
Water supply
Height of structures in served area
These are the starting points...
Also taken in to account is age of apparatus, dispatching method, staffing (which goes back to budget big time), training and certification, hiring process, and a host of other items.

If you can get an engine with at least 3 certificed firefighters on the scene of any incident in your jurisdiction in 5 minutes or less you are doing real good. Some departments go even better than that and shoot for 4 minutes or 4 man crews or both. IT all depends on the demographic served, what kind of call volume you have, what kind of water supply you have, and what kind of structures you are going to be responding to.

My department covers 27 sq. miles with a population of just over 8,000. 4 sq. miles of our township is supplied with hydrants that will sustain flows over 1,000 gallons per minute and are close enough to use with 1,000 foot of 4" hose or less. This portion also holds 90% of our population and no residential structures are over 2 stories (storrage bins, radio towers, and storrage tanks are excluded) thus we do not own a ladder truck nor could we justify the expens to the twonship trustees. We have 4 stations running at least one engine out of each. Each engine will seat 4 and has a 1,500 gpm pump and a 1,000 gallon on board tank. We have only 2 paid personnel at a time max, everything else is covered by volunteers. Our staffing is way to low to make ISO happy so our ISO rating is kind of bad (4 hydranted & 7 or 8 non-hydranted) but we get the job done. IT woudl be great to have more people, but we don't. Not sure what kind of situation you have, but that is one side of the spectrum here.

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on January 12, 2009 at 9:07am

Thanks again Stijn - this is one of my favourite things online, learning how things are done elswhere!

You spoke about 'territory', and how the new system has changed things. Years ago each of our Brigades had it's 'own' territory and would only call for assistance at the last moment. Usually too late. There was a lot of 'ownership' in those days, people being too proud to say 'we need help'.

We now work under a CAD dispatching system, and when this was set up, each area was carefully checked on maps to find out just which Brigade could get to an address the quickest. In the country areas, this had little effect as the townships can be a long way apart (have a look at a world atlas, I'm talking about Victoria, Australia - the smallest mainland State in the ocuntry and it's larger than England, but with a MUCH smaller population). With the CAD, each Brigade has it's primary response area, where it will be called first. Each part of that primary response area will be allocated to the next nearest Brigade for support. If any Brigade is listed to be called for an incident, but is already at another call, then the CAD will automatically respond the next nearest Brigade. And that also is how we get extra appliances for a large job, we just tell dispatch that we need more pumpers and they are responded.

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Permalink Reply by Jay Nicholson on January 12, 2009 at 10:51am

In the US, I do not believe there is any MUST have. A city here with a 2000 population of 95,000 with 14.6 sq. miles of area has 4 stations. Engines are 3-man. They have a manned truck and 3 paramedic ambulances. Also a BC. So each shift will have 23 on duty. It also helps having a strong automatic aid agreement.

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