Southern Nevada fire officials decry North Las Vegas cutbacks

Cutbacks in fire and rescue service in North Las Vegas are unfair to taxpayers in Clark County and Las Vegas and are potentially dangerous, according to fire union officials throughout Southern Nevada.

That's because fire and rescue crews from the county and Las Vegas are spending more time in North Las Vegas answering calls that typically would have gone to fire stations now out of service.

City and county officials say two weeks of mutual aid data isn't enough to prove any threats to public safety, but the numbers clearly show Clark County and Las Vegas firefighters are making more trips to North Las Vegas than they have in years.

"It's become everyone else's responsibility to maintain our city," said Jeff Hurley, president of the North Las Vegas Fire Association. "It won't get anyone's attention until there's a large scale incident, something where it has impacted a life or major buildings. I don't want it to get to that. It's Russian roulette, that's what we're doing right now. It's a little dramatic, but we'll get that bullet in the chamber."

According to the data, automatic aid responses from Las Vegas to North Las Vegas increased 141 percent from July 1 to July 15. On average, Las Vegas, which has more stations on the border than Clark County, is sending 21.8 units a day, double what the city was sending in the first six months of this year. North Las Vegas sent 6.3 units in that time to Las Vegas, compared with 10.4 units in the first six months of the year. On a typical day, Las Vegas responds to about six or seven calls in North Las Vegas, but in the past two weeks that has increased to about 16 or 17.

That compares with last year when North Las Vegas was actually sending more units into the county and Las Vegas than those two communities were sending north.

Two weeks ago, North Las Vegas began the practice of "brownouts," not staffing when a vacancy, caused by a vacation or sick leave, occurs in the city's Fire Department. Under a mutual aid agreement, the first fire and rescue crews respond to the closest emergency regardless of municipal boundaries. The agreement doesn't have specific standards to ensure balance for service, but it requires each community to provide "adequate fire and rescue protection within their own areas."

Hurley said the "brownouts" are slowing response times because units have to travel farther for calls. He said if the trend continued for a year, the department would rely on the other cities to answer 5,500 calls, or about 16 to 17 calls a day.

Dean Fletcher, president of International Association of Firefighters Union Local 1285 in Las Vegas, echoed Hurley's sentiments.

"This whole issue isn't about contracts or anything, this is about response times and services," Fletcher said. "From my end, the city taxpayers are the ones being affected."

He said city officials downplay the severity of the issue at the risk of the public.

"They are going to bed at night hoping nothing happens in the next morning," he said.

Las Vegas Fire Chief Mike Myers said in a statement earlier this week that the department was experiencing an increase in call volume, specifically on medically related incidents, with the overall increase in the past 14 days averaging one to two additional calls per unit, per day.

Myers said the city would monitor the situation but added, "We presently have just two weeks of data."

In its first 94 calls, the new Las Vegas station 106, which opened a few days ago near Lake Mead and Martin Luther King boulevards, answered 48 of them in North Las Vegas.

The Clark County data show a slight increase in responses to North Las Vegas during the same two-week period, with 5.7 units a day - up from 3.3 a day for the first half of the year. Between the two county stations helping out with calls, that's about an extra unit each.

Ed Finger, assistant county manager, said the current aid relationship between the county and North Las Vegas is "fairly balanced." County fire station No. 23, on East Alexander Road, has seen a slight increase in average response times, with the engine response increased by 27 seconds and the rescue adding on 48 seconds in the past two weeks. Fire station No. 20, on Judson Avenue, has one unit with a slightly longer average response time and another with shorter response times.

"We are interested in maintaining the equity of our automatic aid agreements and have received communications from North Las Vegas that changes to dispatch protocols implemented this week will mitigate the increases we've seen over the past few weeks," Finger said.

But Ryan Beaman, president of the county fire union, said he believes county taxpayers "are getting short-changed for the service they pay for."

"Look at how many times North Las Vegas is coming into Clark County," Beaman said. "It's changed drastically. It used to be reciprocating."

North Las Vegas City Manager Tim Hacker said it's too early to draw any conclusions from the data, which includes the Fourth of July, typically a busy holiday for fire departments valleywide.

"Change is always hard for a variety of folks for a variety of reasons," Hacker said. "The fact of the matter is services will continue to be rendered with emergency medical and fire efficiently within the budget constraints we have to deal with."

Although the situation is roiling public fire and rescue squads, emergency responders from private ambulance companies are seeing few changes.

Mike Gorman, general manager for MedicWest, which serves North Las Vegas, said they typically work in a "dual response" system, meaning the closest private and public emergency responders will go to a given incident.

With North Las Vegas cutting back, more dual responses involve a combination of MedicWest and either Las Vegas or the county, Gorman said.

To cut costs, Hacker said North Las Vegas firefighters would stop responding to lesser emergency calls. MedicWest, a private ambulance company that contracts with the city, would handle these emergencies and allow firefighters to concentrate on more serious calls, under Hacker's plan. Of the 30,000 calls the Fire Department responds to annually, about 25,000 are medical. About a quarter of those are not life-threatening.

But that plan isn't in place yet, he added.

Chief Al Gillespie, who was recently placed on administrative leave for a training accident earlier this year, had made that part of his plan to reduce call volume. But Gillespie was on vacation and when he returned, "there was not an opportunity to deploy that," Hacker said.

"We're looking at all possible solutions to using our resources as efficiently as we can," Hacker said.

That means some protocols are changing. For instance, the department will no longer respond to commercial fire alarm calls unless there is verification from police, a building owner or a security company that an emergency exists. Hacker said that will cut out about 1,000 false alarm calls annually.

If the plan is successful in maintaining service while saving money, fire departments valleywide could see a drastic change in their makeup and how they handle emergency calls.

Contact reporter Kristi Jourdan at kjourdan@reviewjournal.com or 702-455-4519. Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0285.