Posted By: Oshkosh Examiner June 10, 2022

The Oshkosh Fire Department had a response time last year of almost 8 minutes, which is above national standards and above the target described in its current strategic plan.

Oshkosh Chief Mike Stanley said that the department is working on a technology-based way to speed up responses but that new stations and equipment may be needed.

A facilities study, scheduled to be presented to the Common Council on Tuesday, will provide more details.

“There are several recommendations” in the report, Stanley said. “Typically the way this works is you identify where long-term growth is and then make some recommendations [about] acquiring property for a future station.”

The department’s newly issued annual report shows that much of the response time is for travel, close to six minutes. The turnout time, which is the period from when an overhead page sounds until the apparatus leaves the station, is 2 minutes, 22 seconds.

The department measures response times to cover 90% of all calls. Calculations are done separately for turnout, travel and total times, so that the total time as reported for 90% of calls is not the sum of the turnout and travel times.

Stanley noted that the city is currently seeing a large expansion of residential housing in the urban core rather than on the edges. 

“There’s a lot of infill development in the downtown,” the chief said. “So, many times, that won’t necessitate a new station. It’s additional resources in an existing station.” 

Oshkosh has six fire stations. Station 15, which is at 101 Court Street, serves downtown and also functions as administrative headquarters for the department.

While new construction may be on the horizon, Stanley said the department is currently looking at a technological approach called Automatic Vehicle Location to improve response times.

This system uses GPS to track the real-time locations of fire equipment so that the closest units can be sent without assuming that vehicles are always in their station. 

“You may be coming back from another call or you may be out doing a building inspection, which puts you out of position and potentially puts another fire truck in a closer position that can reduce that response time,” Stanley said. “It’s kind of like the concept of an Uber driver–the driver that’s closest to you gets there to pick you up.”

He said the department has had to upgrade some technology to make the system workable and currently hopes to have it operational by the end of the third quarter. 

According to the annual report, the department’s response time last year was 7 minutes, 27 seconds, for emergency medical service and 8 minutes, 15 seconds, for fire calls. The total response time includes dispatch time, turnout time and travel time.

A national study published in 2017 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the average response time in urban areas was 7 minutes for EMS calls. The National Fire Protection Association has set a six-minute standard for fire responses, although many communities do not meet this target.

The department’s strategic plan notes that the top expectation of community stakeholders is rapid response times. 

According to a community survey that was conducted as part of the planning process, respondents said that the maximum response time for a fire should be 5 minutes and that the ideal time would be 2 minutes. 

Response times are “one of the things we are always taking a pretty deep look at,” Stanley said. “When there’s a medical emergency or a fire emergency, the faster we can arrive on scene, the better the outcome.”

Total response time is “from the time you call 911 until we put our first units on scene,” the chief said, adding that a variety of factors come into play. 

“There’s some things that we can control a little bit, like how fast we can get out the door. But you can only drive so fast.”

Building new stations or adding equipment to existing ones are ways to bring down response times, he said.

The annual report also shows that in 2021 the department responded to:

False alarms and other false reports made up 6.5% of the department’s calls last year, according to the report.

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