Book Description

In DeKalb, Illinois, the demand for emergency services has increased over the past twenty years from providing fire suppression and basic medical care services to providing a variety of customer services: fire suppression, advanced life support emergency medical services, hazardous materials first response, fire prevention, fire investigation, and public education activities. In addition, the requests for emergency services has risen an average of 4.5 percent per year. In the last eight years the department placed into service a truck company in 1990, opened a third fire station in 1994, and in 1996, a fourth ambulance was upgraded to Advanced Life Support (ALS) level care. During this evolution, the total number of line firefighters has increased only by six, bringing the total number of line firefighters to forty eight. Today, the DeKalb Fire Service is a lean, effective emergency service delivery agency. During this period, we have become increasingly concerned for personnel training, maintenance of emergency responding apparatus and fire stations. In the last decade, selected efforts at "short" range planning have begun to address fire apparatus replacement, fire apparatus regular routine maintenance, fire station facility location and maintenance. The nature of the problem is to: 1. Identify the benefits of master planning. 2. Identify the need for master planning and the essential elements to be included in the planning process. 3. Determine the percentage of U.S. Fire Departments that are master planning. 4. Identify the reasons that fire departments have not developed master plans. 5. Identify the critical needs that should be included in the DeKalb Fire Department Master Plan. The planning for providing services is extremely critical as we meet the challenges of a growing community with limited revenues. DeKalb's Fire Department must not only meet the public demands today, but must plan for the future. It is the focus of this research project to examine the options available for master planning and to determine the best way to develop the DeKalb Fire Department Master Plan. The primary research method is descriptive research. The research was accomplished through a review of the literature and a survey of U.S. Fire Departments. This research project will provide a local historical perspective on the department, identify factors or conditions that effect the fire department, highlight short term planning efforts, and identify the importance of planning and review master planning processes. After review and discussion of the literature and the survey data ... recommendations are offered. [STAR#: 14616].