Local Fire Departments Join Forces

    Residents are familiar with Central Fire Department apparatus responding to and operating at emergencies in the Central community.  In the future; however, Central residents will be observing fire apparatus from the District Six Fire Department and the East Side Fire Department operating at structure fires or covering vacant Central fire stations during working fires.  This change in operation is in response to an automatic aid agreement that the three fire departments will be implementing in February to increase personnel at structure fires.  Under this agreement Central, District Six and East Side fire departments will automatically respond within the three fire districts according to pre-arranged dispatch protocols.  The objective is to have the four closest fire stations respond to structure fires on the first alarm regardless of jurisdictional boundaries. There are areas in the Central Fire District where a District Six fire station or East Side fire station may be closer to a structure fire than some of the five Central fire stations.  Like wise, a Central fire station may be closer to some areas in District Six or East Side requiring Central to respond into those districts for structure fires.

    In the past when a structure fire occurred in Central, only one Central fire station was left staffed to respond to other emergencies.  With the new agreement, at least two Central fire stations will be staffed during working fire events providing greater response capabilities for other emergencies that may arise. The two staffed stations in Central are also available to respond to the working fire if the incident commander request a second alarm be dispatched because additional personnel are needed at the fire.

    During 2012 key personnel from the three fire departments met continuously to design the response districts, write common structure fire standard operating guidelines and to develop a common training curriculum.  The final phase of the agreement, which involves placing all of the dispatch information into the EBR Parish fire dispatch computer system, should be completed by the middle of February.

    Central Fire Department Deputy Chief Charles Mondrick stated structure fires are labor intensive events.  Lack of volunteers and budget constraints to hire additional personnel have restricted the number of firefighters responding to fires in all three departments.  Adopting this automatic aid agreement allows each department to share personnel and apparatus at critical times, which has a direct and positive impact on public safety and the safety of our personnel. 

    In addition to this automatic aid agreement, many of the fire districts in East Baton Rouge Parish developed a rapid intervention automatic aid agreement in 2011.  This agreement provides for a neighboring fire department to provide a Rapid Intervention Crew (RIC) to a department experiencing a structure fire.  The RICs only responsibility at a structure fire is to be on scene and immediately available to the incident commander should firefighters battling the fire become lost or trapped within a structure.  In such an event, the RIC would be deployed to rescue firefighters in distress.  Mondrick stated the latest automatic aid agreement with District Six and East Side will incorporate the established RIC agreement.  We continuously strive to provide the best service to our community and at the same time keeping the safety of our personnel a priority.  These two automatic aid agreements are a great example of those goals and objectives Mondrick said.