Saturday, Dec. 28, 2012 - Tavares, FL
Lake County has a problem where many cities and the County each have a fire department and they won't coordinate initial responses to fires or rescue situations to ensure the CLOSEST equipment is sent to a fire or emergency. A few cities are now using the County centralized dispatch system, but when a fire rescue response is needed, you might not get the closest and fastest response due to lack of a coordinated response agreement.
(Note: This article is not about the separate County EMS or Emergency Management System for ambulances)
Thus a resident living in a Lake County unincorporated section within a city like Tavares (called an enclave) might have to wait longer for a more distant COUNTY fire rescue rescue truck to respond to a house fire even if the CITY has a fire house much closer to them.
I have been at County Board meetings and the City of Tavares when these were discussed, but the County does not appear to want to work with cities to ensure faster responses and no action was taken after the Board heard about the problem this last year. The only current action is that Tavares and Mount Dora are working to develop a coordinated fire response system. Eustis dropped out, and the County Board members have ignored an attempt to coordinate fire responses in the Golden Triangle area.
My personal experience illustrates the absurdities of non-coordination of fire & rescue responses. A circuit box on a power pole near my house in unincorporated Tavares caught on fire, and I called 911. They spent about 5 minutes trying to figure whether County or Tavares Fire Departments must respond because there is no address on the power pole. My phone had my address tied to it, not the location of the fire pole. I had to go through a whole series of qualification questions to determine who would respond.
So, today, the Daily Commercial printed an EXCELLENT article by Livi Stanford explaining even more details on this problem, with a map and details of how an actual home in a County enclave within Tavares recently burned down while waiting for a more distant fire engine from the County, rather than one that was half the distance in Tavares. Stanford called a lot of people and had good information about how unorganized fire response is in Lake County. Read it to get more informed.
Here are My Recommended Action steps:
- Residents should find out where their local fire houses are and who will respond if they report a fire or emergency. Make sure you know if your residential location will result in longer waits for fire rescue reponse than possible if fire response cooperation agreements existed.
- Residents should ask the Lake County Board members (Jimmy Conner, Leslie Campione, Tim Sullivan, Welton Cadwell & Sean Parks) and the closest City Council members why they dropped the issue and have not implemented a COUNTYWIDE, coordinated program to ensure the CLOSEST fire response unit goes to a fire, rather than wait for one that is farther away. According to the Daily Commercial article, it appears the County may not want to share their MSTU Fire revenue to reimburse cities for visiting enclaves, which is wrong. Make your complaints PUBLIC by providing public input at public meetings. This problem is nothing but separate cities and County fire departments wanting to maintain their turf, and not "share" fire fighting duties. Additionally, I think the lack of coordination results in excess spending for County or City fire facilities that are not needed if nearby agencies responded instead. The existence of enclaves results in justifications for new firehouses and firemen when they may not be needed.
- Some Community Group needs to take this issue and start lobbying for changes.
- Sue the Clowns: If a fire or emergency response to your house is delayed over turf battles and non-coordination, consider suing both the County and City that did not have a coordinated system in place. I hate attorneys and suing, but it seems nothing else might work since County and various City officials have talked and talked, but no action. True leaders would act, but right now only Tavares and Mount Dora are trying to improve the situation. If you do sue them, let us know.
- Lake County needs a professional COUNTYWIDE analysis of fire response needs and routing, and should coordinate it with agreements with all localities.
- Perhaps a citizens group or State legislator could spearhead a move to get a state law to force consolidation if the local agencies cannot coordinate fire response. Or, maybe they just mandate that all fire and rescue services in a County are under the control of the County Fire Departments and cities can only add coverage as they see fit.
- THANK the Daily Commercial for initiating the above article. It is way beyond the normal "spot" news reporting and Livi tracked down quotes and added facts.
vj