Amid the city of Burlington growing by about 8% from 2010 to 2020, the Burlington Fire Department is aiming to build more fire stations.
According to Craig Honeycutt, the Burlington city manager, the city is growing by about 1000 people each year. But this growth also led to some gaps in the fire department’s coverage, according to Fire Chief Matt Lawrence.
The department currently has six fire stations with 11 response units and Lawrence said adding more fire stations across the city in strategic locations will help because their response time is directly correlated to where their fire stations are located. New stations would require about 20 new personnel for each fire station, according to Honeycutt.
“We want to make sure that our response time is what it needs to be,” Honeycutt said. “We need to make sure that the stations are in the right location, and we're given equitable service across the city. So we've seen a lot of growth to the west, lot of growth to the south. We've had some annexation and some industrial growth that is occurring.”
North Carolina Fire Chief Consulting, an independent third-party consulting group, recently conducted a fire station location analysis to assess the department’s service in Burlington. It was the first fire station location study in almost fifteen years and helped evaluate how the department was being affected by the city’s growth, Lawrence said.
“It’s sort of a strategic map to where we need to be thinking in the future to provide fire stations for appropriate coverage, as well as looking at the service demands within our existing corporate limits where we have some deficiencies with our response time,” Lawrence said. “How we can strategically fill in some gaps through the city to be able to ensure that we are providing the best level fire protection service that we can.”
The study found that the department responded to 911 calls and arrived at the scene with their first unit under their department goal of 6 minutes and 54 seconds about 90% of the time.
Lawrence said they have done a good job of being able to get a first unit out there quickly, but that their shortfalls lie in getting secondary units out in time. The study found that the department met their response time goal for all units only about 84.69% of the time.
The study also discovered that the fire department cannot send an effective response force to most of the area under the supervision of Fire Station 6, located at 3644 Bonnar Bridge Parkway, in time to make their departmental’s goal response time 90% of the time.
The study identified four potential areas for new fire stations. Those areas are between Fire Station 5 and Fire Station 6 near the Burlington-Alamance Airport, west of Station 6 near Guildford County, between Fire Station 1 and Fire Station Four near Elon and northeast of downtown Burlington.
Lawrence said it is crucial to be able to serve the growing community in Burlington as the city annexes more land and builds more housing.
“You’re going to build apartment complexes on a couple acres of land, then that brings in numerous families, right? So that that population goes up when we do that, and also our calls for service go up,” Lawrence said. “It’s just a matter of having the right number of firefighters.”
Honeycutt credited the city’s growth to its prime location in the middle of key North Carolina cities in the Triad and the Triangle. Honeycutt said that growth is a big issue for Burlington and that they have to proactively deal with it to be ready for its consequences.
In addition to the fire department’s response times, Honeycutt said some other aspects of the city are getting outdated due to the city's growth. This includes adding amenities onto City Park, replacing $13 million worth of water and sewer pipe systems and giving funding to places like Paramount Theater.
Honeycutt said he expects continued growth for Burlington.
“You'll see North Carolina as a whole, in the urban areas, that's where your growth will be,” Honeycutt said. “You'll eventually see, probably Greensboro, Burlington city limits meet — not anytime soon, but that'll eventually happen.”
Lawrence said that no final decision on a new fire station will be made anytime soon as it will be a long process to find funding for it. Honeycutt said it is a way for the city to plan long-term and be aware of the fire department’s needs for when the time comes.
“It's good to know now where we need to be,” Honeycutt said. “So if opportunities come about, such as land, that we could go ahead and at least identify the land that we want to put it all and then that'll give us a direction where to go.”