Study Looks at Where Upper Gwynedd (PA) Fire Station Should Go

Dan Sokil
The Reporter
(TNS)

Mar. 23—UPPER GWYNEDD — Where could a new fire station for the Upper Gwynedd Township Fire Department go? And are there other options the department and township should consider?

The answers to those questions are coming into focus, with key recommendations made in a study presented to the township’s commissioners on Tuesday night.

“If you’re going to build a fire station, it’s a very sizable investment, in terms of money and time. And you want to make sure, before you do that, our first recommendation is that you reach out to your neighbors, to make sure that there either is, or isn’t, any interest in having a regional approach to fire protection” said longtime firefighter and study author Robert Hedden.

“You should really communicate, on a governmental level, with the surrounding townships and boroughs to see if there’s any interest in a regional fire department,” he said.

In March 2022 the fire company’s leadership asked the township commissioners to approve a study examining options for a new station, citing aging infrastructure, a need for more space, and stricter standards for equipment, training, and maintenance at their current station, located on Garfield Avenue and parts of which date as far back as 1942.

At that time the company said they were looking at several possible sites for a new station, and later that month the commissioners approved a contract with the state Governor’s Center for Local Government Services to perform a study. Officials from the center visited the township in August, and in January 2023 the township said the study was under final vetting.

That study was finally presented on Tuesday night by Hedden, a longtime Montgomery Township firefighter now with the Governor’s Center, who summarized the 30-page report to the township commissioners. In a series of meetings and in-person visits, the study group gathered data from the fire company and township staff about their service area, calls, staffing, and the sites they’re considering for a potential new station.

“They suggested several sites, and we included also the existing site, in case there was just some reason that it was determined the fire department should continue to operate out of there,” Hedden said.

Consider regionalizing

Prior to making a decision on a new station, the expert told the board, his recommendation is that the township and fire company consider options for regionalizing, due to issues seen across the state with firefighters aging out of local departments and few new recruits.

“If you go through that process, and it’s determined that yes, there is (interest), then we’re available to come back and do a regional fire study. Or if there isn’t, then we have a recommendation where the ideal station would be, in Upper Gwynedd, based on the sites we were asked to evaluate,” Hedden said.

Four locations were vetted by the study: the current fire station site on the 600 block of Garfield Avenue, a site on the 1600 block of West Point Pike, and two adjacent sites at the intersection of Allentown Road and Sumneytown Pike on the west and east corners. The study first eliminated the West Point Pike site due to its location within a floodplain zone, and based on several criteria spelled out in the report, including access to main roads and the rest of the township, the study commission honed in on one site.

“We suggest that the best location out of the sites would be the west corner of Allentown and Sumneytown Pike, it’s an 11.8-acre lot,” Hedden said.

“The location is optimal: it’s nearly centrally located for response efficiency and geographical coverage. The size of the parcel would allow for design, planning and construction of a contemporary fire station,” he said.

That property is currently zoned residential, owned by Merck, and would need either a zoning change by the commissioners and/or a use variance by the township zoning hearing board to house a new station. The methodology used in the study included site visits by Hedden and the fire company’s leadership, and calculations based on nationwide studies on fire response times for townships with similar population density that call for an industry standard of 15 staff at minimum for a department, and a response time of nine minutes for 90 percent of calls. The nationwide Insurance Services Organization recommends a distance of no more than 1.5 miles from a station for engine companies and 2.5 miles for ladder companies, and Hedden said those standards were used to evaluate each site.

“I just happened to notice, as I came out of North Wales, it was 0.3 miles to the township building. So that is an obvious partner to consider,” he said.

The study also looks at the township’s demographics, including current and projected age and income data, and compares the current features and needs of the existing station with what the company would like in their ideal future station. The current station totals 11,669 usable square feet and requires operating costs of roughly $335,000 per year and a cost per square foot of $28.70 annually.

“The existing station was well-maintained, but it does not have all of the contemporary amenities that would be needed in a modern fire station. But they do a really good job of making it work with what they have,” Hedden said.

That current station was located in the West Point Village section of the township, “where the population center was a natural place for the fire house to be in the early 20th century, but at that point there was no consideration of response times,” Hedden said. The current station does have beds for “duty crews” to sleep, but a new station at a more central location could make it easier for firefighters to get from their jobs or homes to the stations, which could cut response times from when a call is dispatched to when a firetruck is full enough to deploy.

“Unless there’s a duty crew in the station, we have a response in a response,” he said.

Service demands

Based on call data from 2017 to 2022, the fire company handled between 344 and 586 fire calls per year, plus 70 to 239 emergency services calls, and roughly 73 percent of the calls were for fires. The study also breaks down that data by calls per month, with March typically being the busiest; by day of week, with Wednesday usually busiest and weekend usually slowest; and by hour of day, with 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. busiest, a steep drop after 9 p.m., and relatively low call numbers overnight until a steady increase in late morning.

“These are actual data sets, that are useful, that show what the service demands are, and when the greatest demand for service is,” Hedden said.

“The response time during the day is everybody’s concern: folks are working, there’s no career staff in Upper Gwynedd, so the ability to get out from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. is highly critical,” he said.

The study also digs deep into call data from 2020 through 2022 on staffing for each call, with incidents drawing an average of 4.6 personnel on an apparatus and 3.0 not on the apparatus in the first year, with slight dips in the subsequent two years.

“This is not an indictment or criticism of any organization, but you can only have as many apparatus as you can truly staff,” he said.

“So if the consistent number is five, I think when you look at your apparatus plan, whether it’s on a regional plan or you decide to stay with the Upper Gwynedd Fire Department, you need to have an honest conversation about how many apparatus can you actually staff? And that’s why this data is so critical,” Hedden said.

Township Manager Sandra Brookley Zadell asked if that number was high or low, and Hedden said national standards call for a response of 15 persons per call, using mutual aid companies, and fire Chief Eric Geiger said his department typically deploys a vehicle as soon as three personnel are aboard. The study also breaks down response times, and for 2017 to 2021 the company averaged five minutes, 14 seconds from dispatch to response, 5:57 to respond to the scene, and 6:41 to dispatch to the scene — numbers that Hedden said may be slightly misleading, since they’re based on any vehicle, usually a chief’s vehicle instead of a full firetruck, being there.

“If a fire chief says ‘Chief 80 responding,’ at the 3 minute mark, or the 2:57 mark, or the one minute mark, the response time stops for the county. But you don’t know when the firetrucks got there,” he said.

Sites being considered

Mapping out the sites studied compared to other nearby fire companies, Hedden said, the two Allentown Road parcels on the west and east corners of that intersection are 1.2 miles from the North Penn Volunteer Fire Company’s recently renovated station on Main Street in North Wales, and 1.8 miles from the Fairmount Fire Company’s station on Vine Street in Lansdale. The West Point Pike site would be slightly farther from both, and is in the floodplain area, while the current Garfield Avenue site is 1.9 miles from North Penn and 3 miles from Fairmount. Hedden then showed a series of maps centered on each of the sites studied, showing the roads reachable within nine minutes from a call, and the one-mile, two-mile and three-mile radius from each site.

“You can see how close any potential regional fire protection partners are,” Hedden said.

Board President Denise Hull asked whether the study would still be valid depending on how long it could take to study the regionalization option, and Hedden said the sooner those talks, the better.

“Nobody, in this report or in this presentation, said the dreaded M-word. We did not once mention the word ‘merger’ — we talked about regional fire protection, so we’re not presupposing anything,” he said. “We’re not going to project anything other than what this report states.”

Hull then asked if the study should be redone “if, in five to ten years, we had a regionalization that was ready to happen,” and Hedden answered, “I don’t think you have five years.”

“In whatever time frame, that it’s determined that you would like a regional fire study, and your potential partners are all in agreement, we could respond very rapidly to your needs,” he said.

Resident Dan Wallace said he agreed, “100 percent, with the location. I don’t want to talk about the merger issue, but I think regionalization is the way to go in the future.” Another resident asked how many first responders live in the township, and Geiger said a majority live in the company’s response area, but he didn’t have specifics. Hull then thanked the fire chief for his help with the study, and Hedden for performing and presenting it, and said talks would continue at future meetings.

“I think we all learned a lot,” she said.

Upper Gwynedd’s commissioners next meet at 7 p.m. on April 10 at the township administration building, 1 Parkside Place. For more information visit www.UpperGwynedd.org.

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