More and more, the modern visage of a fire service employee comes not in an engine but an ambulance.

Chief Ben Andrews and Fire District 3 officials are looking to bring Sequim’s fire service into a new era where nine out of 10 calls firefighters respond to do with medical issues rather than fighting fires.

“We realized about a year ago that our world is changing,” Andrews said.

Hence, a statistics-laden look at the district via consultant group Fitch &Associates LLC, who in October released a draft of a comprehensive, data intensive report, have Fire District 3’s calls in 2015.

“We wanted to get a healthy, third-person look at our fire system,” Andrews said. “I’m really a data-driven person. A large portion of the staff and the board is on board.”

The idea, Andrews said, is to see if the district is not only meeting the needs of residents, but also is prepared for an increasing reliance on the fire service’s medical services.

“And if not,” Andrews asked rhetorically, “how do we get there?”

Andrews and fire commissioners got a first-hand look and overview of the report from Fitch &Associates consultants Ian Womack and Steven Knight in October. Using data collected from a dispatch system and data from internal district sources, Fitch &Associates charted call loads by time of day, day of week and by month, calls by station, station coverage, medic-versus fire-related calls and more for a district that covers from Deer Park to Gardiner.

“In a sense we’re kind of in transition,” fire district commissioner Steve Chinn said. “Our call rates continue to go up. It’s gotten to the point where we need to find a way to make our system more efficient.”

The good news, Andrews said, is, “We’re doing OK for now.”

“Station locations and staffing decisions made in the past without these numbers are pretty close (to what they should be),” he said.

However, Andrews noted, the fire department is becoming more and more the primary call for medical service for a growing number of Sequim residents.

In 2015, basic and advanced life support calls accounted for about 88 percent of the district’s calls, with about 9 percent toward fire-related calls; another 3 percent of calls were canceled calls.

“(The medical call load) is exaggerated here,” Andrews said. “We’re becoming a lot of people’s primary care. There’s not a lot of walk-in clinical help.”

Things that normally a physician or walk-in clinic would help with are handled by district EMTs and paramedics, he said.

That reliance on the fire district for medical care looks like the norm in coming years. Fitch &Associates expects the basic life support calls to grow exponentially in the next 10 years. Andrews said that Fire District 3 saw a 27 percent jump in basic life support calls with a 14 percent drop in advanced life support calls from 2014 to 2015. Andrews notes that may be a statistic anomaly and wants to compare them to 2016’s numbers before making assumptions about the medical call rate.

Either way, the fire chief said, the district looks primed for growth either in staffing or stations, or both. That’s why the district is not only developing data to show where it needs to grow, but also creating a citizens advisory group — a 10-member panel of private and public community members from various geographic regions in the district — that will begin to meet in 2017.

After getting a full report from Fitch &Associates by the end of 2016, district officials will take three months to review the data.

The district would then use the remainder of 2017 to develop a strategic plan, Andrews said.

Then? Potentially, Andrews said, district officials would consider how much fire district growth the public would support.

Growth areas

Besides the growth in medical call loads, Andrews said Fire District 3 is looking at replacing the station in Carlsborg.

“We’ve outgrown it,” Andrews said. While the structure was sound when it was built, he said, standard fire engines are larger than its engine bays, so the district keeps engines at the nearby training center.

Andrews also expects the district to add a fully manned station at R Corner, on property the district purchased in the Siebert Creek area near Port Angeles.

Fire stations cost $2 million — even the small stations, Andrews said.

Besides an upgrade or new station in Carlsborg and at R Corner, the district may be looking at adding staff at some point, along with upgrades to equipment.

Chinn said the district also is looking at trying to resolve the issue of not having a hospital on the east end of the county.

“From Blyn to OMH (Olympic Memorial Hospital), that’s taking someone out of service for a long time. These things go into what we’re trying to resolve. We’re trying to take the load off people. One simple solution is change how we respond.”

While some issues can be resolved by becoming more efficient, Andrews said, the district may look at asking local taxpayers for a boost.

“At some point we’re going to have to come to voters for funding,” Andrews said. “We’ll start talking with the community about what level they’d be able to support,” he said.

The key to getting that support, Andrews said, is to be fiscally responsible with what you have and be transparent in what you’re doing. That means spending some time making sure the district is running efficiently — hence, the consultants’ report.

“The management team here is very data-driven and trying to be very deliberate about things,” he said. “We’re constantly looking at everything we do.”

“It has to be data-driven; it can’t be emotion-driven or ‘I think’,” Chinn said.

Chinn said there were some staffers who were hesitant to spend money on a consultant plan, but otherwise an analytic report would have fallen to the district’s busy chiefs.

“Every one of our chiefs is up to their gills in different activities — it would have been a slip-shod,” Chinn said.

“I think it was a good investment, dollar for dollar,” he said. “(It) takes a load off our chiefs and it’s good for our customers.”

“Also, from taxpayers’ standpoint, it’s not just throwing people at the issue.”

With tax increases limited for fire districts to 1 percent each year and cost-of-living increases such as utilities, Andrews said, “Our revenue and expense lines are getting ready to touch.”

Prior to the comprehensive report, Andrews and company made a switch based on a numbers analysis that’s already produced benefits: With two medic teams based out of Station 34, the district would use one team to respond to all area medic calls and use the second as backup. That practice, Andrews said, meant the first medic team was almost always busy, producing fatigue with the growing medic call rate.

Now, one medic team is the first responder to calls north of Cedar Street, the other to calls south of Cedar Street.

“We’re not in crisis now,” Andrews said, noting that more efficient stations are better than more stations.

“It’s an excellent, no-cost strategy; we applaud the move,” Knight, the Fitch &Associates consultant, said.

A numbers-based approach also informed the Sequim district recently in how it covers the Gardiner area. The district tried a pilot program earlier this year, shifting staff from the Blyn station to downtown Sequim. Andrews said call response time in the area jump slightly between 9 a.m.-8 p.m., from 10 minutes 42 seconds to 11 minutes 45 seconds.

Andrews said that the program wasn’t worth the shift and was discontinued. “We found we don’t need to move that staff back to Sequim,” Andrews said. “It showed us we can change and it was not as catastrophic as some people thought.”

The fire chief also met with Gardiner residents at a town hall meeting about the changes.

“They were clear they wanted the station staffed as much as possible,” he said.

Fire District 3, by the numbers

In 2015, Fire District 3 averaged 19 calls per day, with 52.5 percent to basic life support calls (basic medical calls of relatively low severity, such as back pain), 35.4 percent to advanced life support (including calls that require administration of medications), and 9.2 for fire-related issues; the other 2.9 percent were canceled calls.

The medical call load is fairly typical of most rural communities, Womack said.

The heaviest load is in the morning at about 1.25 calls at 10 a.m. while the low average was at 4 a.m.

New growth in communities are pushing daytime demand across the state, Knight said.

“No doubt in my mind we have an excellent staff,” Chinn said. “One of the things we’re seeing is they were pretty much at the threshold of what they can take, what they can manage. The way we’re responding right now is probably not the most efficient way.”

Total response time for an average call was 13.2 minutes, including dispatch, turnout (getting staff to vehicles) and travel time, but the bulk of calls, Knight said, were much shorter.

The community may demand that the call time drop to something closer to eight minutes per average call, Womack said, but they would have to invest in the district to make that happen.

“We don’t dictate where your performance should be,” Knight said. He noted that the fastest average call time he’s seen is about four minutes. “In a community of your profile, being so rural, it’s not realistic.”

In fact, to drop the response call time to six minutes, the consultants noted, it would take 11 stations — up from Fire District’s three fully manned stations — to get there.

All three fully staffed stations are 90 percent reliable to answer calls locally — i.e., residents will more often than not see response from their local station — which indicates a healthy fire district, consultants said.

“We needed someone from the outside to look at this,” Chinn said of the consultants’ report. “It helped us look at (the growing calls issue) from a different viewpoint. They gave us great information. Their solutions will be interesting.”

“Also, from taxpayers’ standpoint, it’s not just throwing people at the issue.”

“We have one shot to get this right,” Chinn said. “People’s health is at risk.”

Fitch &Associates LLC’s contract is for up to $49,550.