Methods Fire Station Locations

1. Assessing the Response Performance of Warren County Fire Stations, Kentucky Erin Lynch, Hoffman Environmental Research Institute, Department of Geography & Geology, Western Kentucky University • Methods • Fire Station Locations • Bowling Green has five fire districts: Northside, Central, Airport, Westside, and Southside. Other fire stations in Warren County are manned by volunteers, so they were neglected for this study. The locations of the Bowling Green fire stations were retrieved from the Bowling Green Municipal Website. • Vehicle Speeds • Speeds were assigned to roads on the basis of the Census Feature Class Codes. A2 (Primary Road Without Limited Access) and A3 (Secondary and Connecting Road) roads were assigned a speed of 40mph. A4 (Local, Neighborhood, and Rural Road) and A63 (Access Ramp) roads were assigned a speed of 35mph. A5 (Vehicular Trail) and A7 (Road as Other Thoroughfare) may not have surfaces suitable for swift progress by fire vehicles, so they were assigned a negligible speed of 0.1mph. A1 (Primary Highway With Limited Access) roads were also assigned a speed of 0.1mph as fire vehicles are unlikely to use these roads because access is restricted to on/off ramps. • Performance Indicators • The National Fire Protection Association Standard NFPA10 for career fire departments establishes the following time objectives: • Fire response time: Four minutes (240 seconds) or less for the arrival of the first arriving engine company at a fire suppression incident and/or eight minutes (480 seconds) or less for the deployment of a full first alarm assignment at a fire suppression incident. • Additionally, NFPA 1720 establishes the following response times for volunteer fire departments: • Analysis • To determine the response performance of the Warren County career fire stations, network analysis was performed on the Census 2000 TIGER/Line road data for Warren County. Census 2000 block shapefiles and demographic data were employed to determine the proportion of the Warren County population located within each fire response time bracket. Note that Census 2000 demographic data under-represents the counties • Findings • Urban Response Performance • The career fire stations in Bowling Green serve 72.6% of the county’s urban population with an excellent response time of 4 minutes or less, and 92.3% of the county’s urban population with an acceptable response time of 8 minutes or less. This meets national standards. • Suburban Response Performance • The career fire stations in Bowling Green serve only 82.8% of the county’s suburban population with a response time of 10 minutes or less. This falls short of national standards for career and volunteer fire stations. • Rural Response Performance • The career fire stations in Bowling Green serve 56.4% of the county’s rural population with a response time of 14 minutes or less. This falls short of national standards for career and volunteer fire stations. • Overall Response Performance • The career fire stations in Bowling Green serve 46.3% of the county’s population with an excellent response time of 4 minutes or less, and 64.9% of the county’s population with an acceptable response time of 8 minutes or less. • Recommendations • In light of the county’s predicted failure to meet national fire response performance standards, it is recommended that some of the volunteer fire stations in Warren County be upgraded to career fire stations. • References • Census Feature Class Codes. Retrieved on September 29, 2008 from http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/cfcc_to_mtfcc.txt • Fire Districts – Bowling Green, KY – Official Municipal Website. http://www.bgky.org/fire/districts.php • GIS for Fire Station Locations and Response Protocols, p12. Retrieved on September 20, 2008 from http://www.geographymatters.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/gis-for-fire.pdf • SAFER Grants: 2007 FAQ: National Fire Protection Association Standards. Retrieved on September 29,2008 from http://www.firegrantsupport.com/safer/faq/07/faq_natstand.aspx • US Census Bureau – Tiger/Line. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/