| | Published November 16th, 2016
| With its New Standards Of Cover, Moraga-Orinda Fire District adds to its Roadmap of Services
| | | By Nick Marnell | | |
The Moraga-Orinda Fire District updated its Standards of Cover for the first time in 10 years and though the document showed district performance goals falling within acceptable, recognized standards, it confirmed the frustration of longer Orinda response times, which continue to nag the district.
The Standards of Cover document analyzes MOFD's deployment of its fixed and mobile resources and their response to fire, medical and special emergencies within the district. Director Fred Weil described the work as an assessment of "how well we're doing and how we can do better." The 97-page document, loaded with charts, tables, graphs and maps and presented by Fire Chief Stephen Healy at the district's Nov. 2 meeting, focuses mainly on what the district can do to improve its emergency response times.
No governmental or legal requirements exist to regulate response times, but according to the Performance Goals and Objectives on Page 73 of the Standards of Cover, the district goal is to reach all medical emergencies within Moraga and Orinda in seven minutes or less and all fires or rescues in seven minutes and 20 seconds, 90 percent of the time. The Commission of Fire Accreditation International, an industry performance evaluator, considers those goals "Superior Service Levels" for a suburban fire district like MOFD.
Orinda has always posed a response time problem for the district. Despite the fact that three fire stations are located in Orinda and two in Moraga, the district has long reported about a one-minute longer response time in Orinda than in Moraga. The September district incident report lists 56 total responses into Moraga at an average response time of 6.97 minutes 90 percent of the time, and 74 responses into Orinda at 8.23 minutes.
"The conclusion I've come to is that the street routes are oblique and therefore less direct. The roads follow the topography, which is a hilly terrain and not a grid," Healy said.
Outgoing director Alex Evans of north Orinda requested that the chief insert into the Standards of Cover what the district can do to shorten the Orinda response times. "We know what we know about the roads," Evans said, and he urged Healy to continue to work on improving the call processing time and to keep on the lookout for equipment that might navigate those roads more quickly.
Evans also suggested that the district include in the document how it can improve the substandard water flow out of the fire hydrants, notable the older ones in north Orinda. Healy explained that the general manager of the East Bay Municipal Utility District - which owns the fire hydrants - said EBMUD would pay for 10 percent of the cost to improve water flow, as long as the fire district puts up 90 percent, but the chief said that was not a realistic option for MOFD. Orinda residents voted in 2002 and again in 2006 against measures that would have funded fire hydrant and storm drain repairs.
The chief said that even considering the 2 percent of the 1,430 district hydrants that do not measure up to current water flow standards, MOFD can meet the needs for routine emergencies any place in the district with the use of its 2,500-gallon water tender, deployed at station 44 in Orinda. "I've never been to a fire in my 10 years here where I've said, 'If only we had a good water system,'" Healy said.
The Standards of Cover, the strategic plan, the long-range financial plan and the budget documents present an accountable roadmap for MOFD operations, and each report is published on the district website.
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA