By Sydney Zatz, Valley News Live
MOORHEAD, Minn. (Valley News Live) – Those with the Moorhead Fire Department say the need for more resources is growing.
The department says that as the city expands, they need more firefighters and a third station in the coming years. The need goes all the way back to 2007. Moorhead Fire Chief Jeff Wallin says they began to hire more staff to open that third station. But some budget issues got in the way. Now, they’re looking to add a station in the southwest part of town.
“It’s a part of town that’s growing pretty quickly right now. There’s a lot of higher-density growth that’s occurring with apartment buildings in those areas. We’re seeing an increased call volume in that part of town. Our response times are starting to get affected by responding from our station 2.”
When there’s an emergency, time is of the essence.
“Our goal is to have someone out on the scene in a short amount of time to be able to intervene while we can make a difference in a cardiac emergency. So then we can keep a fire in the room, or the contents of origin, before we lose an entire house. As the city develops further and further away from its core infrastructure, you need to add additional fire station locations to be able to keep those fire response times short enough to intervene when we can make a big difference.”
There are mutual aid agreements with all agencies in Clay County, West Fargo, and Fargo. One is in the works with the Southern Valley Fire Rescue in Horace. But, more agencies doesn’t mean that response time is quicker.
“But the farther away the resources are coming from, the farther away it takes for those resources to arrive on the scene. So while having mutual aid does provide a great deal of assistance in the total number of resources, We also need to arrive early enough to make a difference. That’s why you need both a combination of strong mutual aid systems to provide all the resources necessary and to keep existing resources in place in other parts of the metro area.”
As the City of Moorhead recently completed its five-year strategic plan, the future is now at the forefront of some people’s minds.
“So we’re starting to focus on multi-year plans to address city growth and fire department services that are provided. The right sizing, the number of staff, and making sure that response times are as good as they need to be in most parts of the town are part of that strategic plan. So we’re starting to focus our activities on staffing and response times now.”
Fire Chief Wallin tells Valley News he doesn’t have specific numbers available yet, but they will be meeting with the city manager and the finance department within the coming weeks before they meet with city council later this year.
