The Riverside Fire Department is responding to more calls for assistance than ever before and needs dozens of additional firefighters and several new and upgraded stations to meet the demand, according to the results of a recent assessment announced Tuesday.
The department answers an emergency call every 11 minutes, which officials said strains the system and slows down response times. The study by an independent firm concluded that the RFD needs 84 more firefighters along with two new and several refurbished fire stations to respond adequately to the city’s year-round fire season.
“That’s the conclusion of a new master plan and resource assessment designed to help RFD cut more than a minute off response times and raise to industry standards its ratio of firefighters to residents,” according to the city’s announcement. “The study warns that a growing imbalance between demand and capacity could overwhelm firefighters.”
Fire Chief Steve McKinster noted the study’s conclusions.
“We have an extraordinarily talented and very devoted department,” McKinster said in a statement. “But the trend lines are impossible to ignore, and we must take seriously the challenges we are facing.”
The study Wyoming-based AP Triton calls for reducing response times from the current average of seven minutes, 18 seconds to six minutes.
“Response times are critical because arriving quickly saves lives, reduces fire spread and improves medical outcomes for injured people,” according to the city.
AP Triton recommended hiring 84 firefighters for a ration of about 0.95 firefighters per 1,000 residents. The city’s existing ratio of 0.69 firefighters per 1,000 residents is lower than the staffing levels of fire departments in Corona, Anaheim, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale.
The RFD currently has 225 firefighters, the same as seven years ago, while service demand has increased by approximately 72% since the last new fire station was built in 2007 and by approximately 26% since the last staffing increase in 2018.
At the same time, the fire department is dealing with the impact of increased population growth and more wildfire exposure, officials said. Updated state mapping added more than 13,000 Riverside land parcels into high-risk fire areas, reflecting the city’s exposure to wildfire incidents, evacuations and multiple real-time emergency incidents requiring firefighters to respond.
“We know that wildfire season is year-round now,” Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson said in a statement. “We no longer have significant fires a few months of the year, they now come at any time.”
According to AP Triton, call volume each year will continue increasing to 71,000 calls by 2035 and 83,000 calls by 2040. Without investments in staffing and resources, the RFD will experience reduced unit availability, longer response times and more frequent and longer-lasting periods of “system overload conditions.”
City officials said the RFD is operating in an “overload” condition 26% of working hours, with “critical overload” in effect 2% of operating time. As call volume grows to an estimated 71,000 calls by 2035, overload conditions are projected to increase to 40%, and critical overload would double to 4%. By 2040, at approximately 83,000 calls annually, the system is expected to experience overload 54% of the time, with critical overload occurring at a 6% rate.
“We owe it to our residents and business community to take a hard look at this data and determine a path forward,” Mayor Pro Tem Steven Robillard said in a statement. “We have an excellent fire department, and we need to ensure it has the personnel and tools to remain that way.”
