Fire grant is a shot in the arm for Utah district

By Amy Choate-Nielsen
Deseret Morning News
Copyright 2006 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 

ALPINE, Utah - The Lone Peak Safety District's holiday gifts came early this year, in the form of a $931,500 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The grant will pay for nine new full-time firefighters over the next five years, which is good tidings to the district's small — and mostly part-time — staff.

"It's almost a million-dollar shot in the arm to help this area, which is great," said Deputy Chief Brad Freeman of the Lone Peak Safety District. "We're going through some growing pains, big time."

The district, which currently employs three full-time and 25 part-time firefighters, provides police and fire protection to Alpine, Highland and Cedar Hills. The paid staff is supplemented with volunteers, but Freeman says at this point, they're scraping by to meet the needs of the some 30,000 residents of the area.

"At night we just have two firefighters available, part-time," Freeman said. "Then we can count on some volunteers, but it's been kind of sparse lately. Typically, an average house fire takes a minimum of six guys, according to (National Fire Protection Agency) standards."

According to Freeman, each fire truck should carry a captain, fire engineer and four firefighters. The captain and fire engineer stay with the truck, pumping water and advising the firefighters from the outside.

Two firefighters will go inside to battle the blaze, and two are supposed to wait on the outside, fully dressed, with oxygen tanks, to assist the firefighters inside in case of a backdraft or the building collapses.

Freeman says the district can usually handle fires or medical emergencies when they arise, but when multiple calls come in at the same time, the team is stretched. The district can ask for mutual aid from surrounding fire departments. It usually takes about 15 to 20 minutes for the aid to arrive, Freeman says, "but that's usually too long."

"There's not one of our guys who wouldn't go in and try to save somebody even if we didn't have enough people," Freeman said. "They're still going to do that, they always have. But this (grant) is going to be a major step."

With the grant, the district will now have six full-time firefighters and paramedics on around the clock. Freeman says the district hopes to hire from within, and hiring should be completed within 90 days.

Alpine, Cedar Hills and Highland will help supplement the grant with $99,000, which will be divided up between the three cities and paid by percentage of how big each city is, over a period of four years.

"We're all in it together," said Cedar Hills City Councilman Jim Perry. "The service for one is a service for all. We're three musketeers in that respect."

Perry and Alpine Mayor Hunt Willoughby said the district's fire coverage is superb, but because of the growth of the area, the cities are trending away from a part-time department. The trick is, they said, is finding a balance between the needs of the district and the taxes residents are willing to pay.

In the meantime, the district is continuing to look for more government funds to help ease the transition into an entirely full-time department.

"I think we've gotten all the grants we've applied for," Lone Peak Safety District Fire Chief Craig Carlisle said. "We're always looking and we're always working on grants. We will be working on them to try to get as much grant money as we can get."