For emergency services, response time is king. In the City of Bend, and throughout Deschutes County, the fire departments have the obvious responsibilities to manage house fires, as their name would suggest, but actually spend 80 percent of their time responding to emergency medical calls—and, points out Fire chief Larry Langston, the difference between a five minute and the current nine-minute response time is critical. Reviving a heart attack victim within five minutes, for example, means a 50/50 chance of survival; longer than eight minutes, virtually zero. Those response times are directly tied to funding and available resources—both which are woefully low for the City of Bend Fire Department.
In spite of being hamstrung by low finances, the City of Bend Fire Department does an admirable job responding to thousands of emergency calls each year. But to help it decrease its response time—and to save more lives and houses—it is of paramount necessity that you vote “yes” for the Fire Levy on May’s ballot.
Let’s repeat that: Vote YES for Measure 9-98.
The increase on property taxes for homeowners is minimal; roughly, $40 each year for a $400,000 home, or less than the price for one month of cable TV (which, let us also point out that if you are dead from a heart attack or your house burns down, that cable TV won’t mean much). Over five years—the levy’s lifespan—it will generate $10 million.
The requested levy is hardly a luxury. It is the first such request from the fire department in its 100-year history, and Chief Langston seems almost apologetic to be asking.
“This is new to me,” he said. “I have no experience with this sort of thing.”
But the reasons for the levy are evident and eminent: Compared to other, similar Oregon cities, Bend’s fire department has greatly limited resources, with the lowest number of firefighters per capita, and six engines are older than 20 years. What stands out most is that Bend has a fire station every 32 square miles, compared with every three square miles in Ashland and every seven square miles in Eugene. Obviously, that remoteness and those limited resources greatly impact response times. (In spite of those great disadvantages, Bend’s fire department does respond remarkably quickly; nine minutes, on average, compared with much better resourced departments within the five-to-six-minute range).
Still not convinced? Then, consider this argument: The response time for any municipality’s fire and emergency services is tied to property insurance ratings. If that rating drops, we are certain you will pay far more than $40 a year in additional homeowner insurance. Isn’t giving that money to your fire department just so much smarter?
Vote YES on the fire levy.
See more photos by Matt Fox of the City of Bend Fire Department here.
This article appears in Apr 24-30, 2014.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
OMG I KNOW THIS GUY!
ME TOO!!!
And yet I haven’t heard of a single house burning down or dude dying of a heart attack because the fire department didn’t arrive fast enough. Am I wrong?
@BigObsidianFlow…. Knowledge is Power, Inform yourself!
http://www.ktvz.com/news/bend-council-oks-may-vote-on-fire-dept-levy/21381542
http://citizensforasaferbend.org/
Well, Citizen, I took you up on your invitation to “inform” myself by reading the linked article. Here’s what it says:
“We haven’t had anyone come to council and say, my spouse or my kid died because you didn’t have enough staffing.” Said Bend City Councilor Mark Caple.
So who says the Fire Dept’s lack of funding has cost lives? According to your article, the only person making this claim is “the fire department’s “physician sponsor,” St. Charles-Bend ER Dr. Bill Reed.”
In other words, the only person claiming this is someone on the Fire Dept’s payroll. You know, someone who personally financially benefits by the measure’s passage.
So thanks. I now feel very informed. And still not wrong.
Maybe you should read the article over again……
In one “abdominal catastrophe,” he said, “someone died in front of two medics who couldn’t get help” in time, Reed said. Another was a respiratory case in which it took 19 minutes for an ambulance to show up. A third death happened, he said, because crews were all out “on a big fire or something” and there was “an incredibly long response time to somebody who shouldn’t have died – a respiratory deathOn Thursday, he was even more blunt about the importance of the fire funding measure.
“It’s an absolute need,” Capell said. “There are people who are going to die if we don’t pass the bond measure.”.”