The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Fire chiefs aligning emergency response
MIDDLETOWN » At least two of the city’s three fire companies are working tomore closely align their policies on emergency response.
Chiefs Robert Kronenberger of the Middletown Fire Department and Robert Ross of the South Fire District have been meeting regularly to codify into set policy how they share responsibilities when responding to fires.
The chiefs have discussed common operating frequencies and tweaking each of their department’s specific policies, perhaps in the direction of clauses that the first engine on the scene of a fire become the “attack” engine, regardless of whether a fire crops up in the South District or in the city fire department’s jurisdiction.
While neither company has such a policy in place yet, the chiefs emphasized that fire crews do not wait
for the local company to arrive to begin fighting fires.
Kronenberger said the first engine on scene will send firefighters to the structure, the second will work water supply and so on. “It’s got to be very well-choreographed. We don’t want to have tomic romanage it,” said Kronenberger.
Ross said local fire departments often revisit and adjust standing policies, and that chiefs from inside and outside the city convene regularly to discuss and revise shared services.
City officials occasionally consider outright consolidation of the three fire companies, but the chiefs are looking at policies now to increase efficiency inthe shorter term.
“Itwould be a huge legislative undertaking,” Ross said of consolidation.
“There actually has to be state legislature approval,” said Kronenberger. “They have to dissolve the tax districts.”
The Common Council sets the mil rate for the city fire department, but the South District and Westfield have their own legislative fire commissions and their own tax rates.
Ross said that the city’s fire departments worked together to plan for unlikely emergency scenarios. “Middletown is at the crossroads of I-91 and Route 9 – really a cross-through for all of the Northeast, said Ross. “There’s a tremendous amount of various hazardous materials that cross through our state … if that truck rolls over and burns, we need to know how to deal with that.”
Kronenberger said that hospitals and universities also present unique challenges.
The chiefs said any adjustment to policy would have to take into account the departments’ labor agreements, but that they had been meeting with union leadership to makes sure there would be no hiccups, and that a possible next step would be to bring Westfield’s volunteer department leaders into the process.