Evans Fire Study

In 2009 the City of Evans commissioned a fire study by Emergency Services Consulting International. The purpose of this study was to evaluate all Evans fire and emergency services and to begin a planning process for those services for the future. ESCI was chosen through a Request for Proposal process and was funded from the Evans Fire Impact Fund.

This study makes 67 recommendations for immediate and future improvements to the Evans fire and emergency service delivery system.

Three critical themes or problem areas emerged from this study that demonstrated the need to move forward with the Evans Fire District Project:

1. The first is the inability to consistently provide the needed number of firefighters for structure fire calls.

   The number of paid and volunteer firefighters in Evans is below national norms and local comparisons. Also, the average number of firefighters able to respond to structure fires in Evans has fallen over the last 10 years.

   This is due to the decline of the traditional volunteer firefighter program and not being able to fund an adequate number of paid firefighters.

2. The second theme or area of concern is the growing number of back to back calls for service (or concurrent calls).

   The study shows that almost 10% of all Evans Fire Rescue calls occur at a time when another call is already in progress.

   At our current minimum staffing of one Engine Company we are unable to respond to the second call without redirecting firefighters already assigned to the first call, waiting until the crew is available or calling for mutual-aid from another fire department. This lengthens the response time to the second call and is especially critical when the second call is a fire.

3. The third area of concern identified was the poor condition of our fire trucks and the lack of a way to replace them.