MARK BOWES
Richmond Times Dispatch

A decades-old tradition that allowed fire and rescue squad volunteers to use red warning lights in their personal vehicles while responding to emergency calls will soon become a historical footnote in Chesterfield County.

And the volunteers face another change that will fundamentally alter the way they respond to emergencies: They no longer will be automatically dispatched to alarms if they don't have members at their stations ready to go.

The changes, effective Tuesday, are designed to limit vehicle accidents, increase department efficiency and improve response times to the county's 32,000-plus fire and emergency medical calls each year, county fire officials announced this week.

"We went out and looked at other departments ... in search of best practices," said Chesterfield Deputy Fire Chief Mark Sacra. "And we asked, 'Are (your volunteers) still responding from home to answer calls?' And across the board, we found that that kind of response model has gone by the wayside. With traffic and safety concerns, most people stopped doing that several years ago."

Chesterfield consulted with departments in Tidewater, Northern Virginia, Maryland and Tennessee that still partially used volunteers or had a combination of volunteers and paid staff.

Chesterfield, like many departments, wants to minimize the risk of traffic hazards while responding to and from emergencies, which are among the leading threats to the safety of firefighters and emergency medical personnel.

Emergency vehicles are involved in about 13,500 accidents annually on the nation's roads, and one-third of the roughly 100 annual firefighter deaths each year occur while personnel are responding to or returning from emergencies, department officials said, citing federal statistics.

In Chesterfield last year, the department recorded 29 vehicle accidents in responding to 32,971 calls for service. Only two of those accidents were considered avoidable.

Under the new procedures, volunteer fire and rescue squad units will be dispatched to emergencies in their coverage areas only if they have staff ready to go at their stations. Previously, volunteer units were dispatched even when they had no available staff for immediate response. They had four minutes to answer the call before the next closest unit was dispatched.

"We won't have that four-minute lag anymore," said fire spokesman Lt. Jason Elmore.

Unstaffed volunteer units will continue to be paged about alarms in their coverage areas, but they will no longer be allowed to respond unless the on-scene commander determines they are needed. This will reduce the number of units responding to a call and maximize efficiency, officials say.

Chesterfield has about 120 active volunteer firefighters and only two fire companies that are staffed solely by volunteers. The county has 11 other companies that have a combination of volunteer and career firefighters, who are paid a salary.

The volunteers supplement a staff of 381 paid firefighters across the county.

The prohibition on volunteers using red lights in their personal vehicles while responding to their fire stations or emergency calls will likely have little impact. Many have already discontinued the practice.

"At my station, we've discouraged that for a number of years," said Howard Canada, chief of the Midlothian Volunteer Fire Company. "And that's simply because the majority of Chesterfield County is so heavy with traffic that it doesn't do anyone any good at all. Citizens are not legally bound to pull over for a private vehicle like that.

"It's just an accident waiting to happen," Canada added.

The department said 25 volunteer emergency responders nationwide died while responding to stations or emergencies between 2005 and 2010. Additionally, 126 civilian motorists died nationwide between 2005 and 2009 in incidents involving emergency vehicles using emergency lights, the department said.

Canada said the dispatching change for the volunteer units "is going to take some getting used to," but it's probably for the best.

"We're looking out not only for the safety of ourselves but for the safety of our citizens on the highways as well," Canada said.

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February 26, 2011