Departments adapt to keep up with increasing calls.
By: Leon Tovey
MONROE Continued residential growth has placed an increased burden on the township’s three fire districts, but fire officials say plans to expand in order to keep up with growth are proceeding as well as can be expected.
The number of calls to each of the three districts has increased dramatically in recent years jumping by between 50 and 100 calls per year for the past five years and each has been forced to look at adding a second station to meet the needs of its growing community.
A new fire station on Centre Drive in District 3 is slated for completion by the end of the year; work is expected to begin this summer on a new station on Avenue K in District 1; and District 2 officials are in the early stages of planning a new station near the intersection of Applegarth and Cranbury-Half Acre roads.
The stations will also have to be manned and equipped once they are completed. District 1 is the last of the three districts to rely more on volunteers than on full-time, paid firefighters. The other two districts transitioned to a reliance on full-time, or "career," firefighters in the mid-1990s and District 3 no longer uses volunteers.
Both District 2 and District 3 will have to hire 16 new career firefighters to man their new stations, but District 1, which is based in the densely populated northern section of town and still has a large pool of volunteers to draw from, will remain mostly volunteer, District 1 Chief Joseph Sensale said last week.
The planned expansion of the three districts might seem sudden, but District 3 Chief Jim Beebe said that it has been in the works for a long time.
"Ideally, all emergency services seek to grow with the community," Chief Beebe said. "Usually, however, we fall behind.
"There are so many issues of infrastructure that have to be considered," he said. "The ratable base has to be developed, referendums have to go to the voters and be approved. Things take time."
District 3, which is based at Fire Station 23 on Schoolhouse Road, responded to 699 calls in 2004, Chief Beebe said. That’s nearly twice the number of calls it received in 1997, when the district responded to 355 calls.
Chief Beebe said the numbers have really started to jump since 2000, when the district responded to 413 calls. The district has responded to 268 so far in 2005 and looks to be on track for another big year, he said.
In District 2, the story is much the same, Lt. Scott Volkman said last week. The district responded to 753 calls in 2004, up from 375 in 1998, he said.
"I can remember being a volunteer in ’93 and 300 was a big year," he said, noting that the district had already responded to 326 calls this year.
Chief Sensale said firefighters in District 1 responded to 745 calls in 2004 and had responded to 270 so far this year.
But Chief Sensale was quick to point out that the bulk of those calls were mutual aid calls to districts 2 and 3, which, because they comprise the township’s planned retirement communities, are home to the bulk of the calls.
Indeed, all three districts respond to fires in each other’s districts, so many of the calls each receives is to another district, Chief Beebe said.
For example, slightly more than half of the calls District 3 responded to this year originated in District 3, he said. The remainder were in districts 2 and 3.
Still, the increase in call volume particularly in the PRCs troubles fire officials, who are worried about increased response times.
The National Fire Protection Association, an international nonprofit fire prevention advocacy group, recommends a response time of five minutes or less for departments of comparable size to Monroe, Chief Beebe said.
Response times to the outlying sections of each of the township’s three districts often exceed that recommendation.
Response times in District 1, which is headquartered at Fire Station 51 on Harrison Avenue and covers the northern area of town, range from four to nine minutes, Chief Sensale said.
Response times in District 2, which is based at Fire Station 57 on Applegarth Road and covers the western and southern sections of town, range from five to seven minutes, Lt. Volkman said.
Chief Beebe said response times in District 3, which covers the central and eastern sections of town, range from four to 10 minutes.
Each of the chiefs predicted that a second station, equipped with an additional engine, would allow each district to reduce response times.
Chief Beebe was quick to point out that the district’s response times are not so slow as to seriously endanger lives or property. The only structure-fire-related death to occur in the township in the last several years happened in April of last year, when a 41-year-old township man set fire to a partially built house on Spotswood-Englishtown Road and was killed.
Still, the times are slow enough to merit concern, he said.
But with the current rate of growth in the township 607 new houses were sold in the township in 2004 and more than 2,800 others are currently planned or under construction response times are not likely to get much better without new stations, District 2 Commissioner Martin Berkowitz said Wednesday.
This is particularly true in District 2, he said.
While Chiefs Beebe and Sensale said the new fire stations in their respective districts (and in District 3, the 16 new, paid firefighters that will be hired to man the station) would meet their needs for the foreseeable future, Capt. James Carbin of District 2 said last week that his district would probably need a third station in the vicinity of Route 33 in the next few years.
District 2 covers four of the township’s PRCs Encore, Clearbrook, Concordia and the Ponds and will see three more come online in the next five years. As the district is responsible for Route 33, it would also cover a proposed minor league ballpark (if and when it is built) and new commercial development in the area, Capt. Carbin said.
Mr. Berkowitz agreed, but said talk about a third station was premature, since the district won’t even present a referendum on the Cranbury-Half Acre Road station until next year at the very earliest.
"We have to get closer to where a lot of this new development in town to do our job," Mr. Berkowitz said. "We have to build another station. But we’re still in just the very early stages of planning all this."