· Maintained acceptable emergency response times in spite of significant growth and increasing traffic congestion and gridlock
· Maintained fiscal responsibility with a balanced budget, no parcel tax and with well-funded and carefully targeted reserves
· Achieved 98% resident satisfaction with the Fire District’s level of service
· Continued our multi-year station replacement plan using funded reserves
· Made strategic property acquisitions for critical fire station replacements using funded reserves
· Deployed to 9 wildland fires, 2 floods and 3 hurricane incidents, almost all costs were reimbursable and District employees gained invaluable experience while maintaining full local coverage. (The firefighters received overtime pay which may be shown as “regular pay” or salary in media reports which is a misrepresentation of the facts)
· Established national leadership in the adoption of new technologies, specifically Drones
I am looking forward to my 16th and final year on the Board and here is what I see as our biggest challenges in 2018:
Station Replacement Plan
Complete Fire Station 6, start Station 1, design new Stations 3 and 4, develop an alternative for Station 5 given its lack of quick access to primary response routes and decide what to do in Eastern Menlo Park Fire Station 77 given the community challenges and a lack of support from the City of Menlo Park.
Reach New Labor Agreement with IAFF Local 2400
Mobility
If we cannot get to an incident we cannot do our job. Our mobility is increasingly being degraded by the lack of action by our partner agencies that control both the growth in demand for
our services and the capacity of our primary response routes.
Earthquake Planning and Preparedness
For a number of scientific and statistical reasons we are increasingly likely to have catastrophic earthquakes in the coming decades and we are poorly prepared for such events.
Reference: Upheaval!: Why Catastrophic Earthquakes Will Soon Strike the United States by Mr. John L. Casey (Author), Dr. Dong Choi (Author), & 2 more
Wind –Driven Fire Planning and Preparedness
The recent Napa/Santa Rosa/Coffey Park devastation makes clear that even flat terrain communities are highly vulnerable to wind driven fires. The Western portions of the Fire District (Menlo Park and Atherton) are particularly vulnerable to such an event because of their heavy vegetation, combustible building materials, unprotected roof vents, lack of residential fire sprinklers and non-existent warning systems and neighborhood evacuation plans (with the notable exception of the excellent Walsh Road Evacuation Plan).
Reference: California Needs to Rethink Urban Fire Risk After Wine Country Tragedy by Max Moritz
Web Link
Sea Level Rise Planning and Preparedness
Over the next few decades a large portion of the Eastern side of the Fire District (Menlo Park and East Palo Alto) will be below sea level and an even larger portion will be subjected to significant seasonal flooding. There has been no planning for this hazard and significant efforts need to be made now to mitigate those flood hazards, to provide for a real time warning system that does not rely on cell phones or the internet and to provide well thought out neighborhood evacuation plans for all of the potentially impacted areas AND for the adjacent areas which will, of necessity, serve as evacuation sites (whether planned for or not).
Reference: The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell
In addressing these challenges, I note with concern that there is a huge disconnect between the Fire District’s responsibility to respond to these disasters and the County, Cities and Town’s legal responsibilities for transportation design, approval of new commercial and residential developments, disaster planning (including warning systems and evacuation plans) and post disaster rebuilding.
The Fire District’s role in responding to these challenges will not be easy and our partner agencies, except for the Town of Atherton, do not appear to place a high priority on either carrying out their disaster related responsibilities or mitigating the impacts of their actions on the Fire District – I would be pleased to being proven wrong.
In closing, I look forward to spending my final year on the Fire Board as an outspoken crusader for both greater mobility and much better disaster preparedness and as a resource for my fellow Board members and the Fire Chief.
