Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 6, 1993 TAG: 9303080742
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
STATIONS WITHOUT FIREFIGHTERS
NOBODY is questioning the dedication, training or skill of the volunteers in Roanoke County's fire department. In a lot of cases, they're probably more dedicated than paid firefighters, for whom the job may not be a labor of love.Nor can anyone deny the fact that the volunteers save a heap of taxpayer dollars. Roanoke city, for example, spends nearly $10 million per year to operate and administer its all-paid department. That's about $100 per resident, and more than $40,000 per firefighter.
There is, however, no such thing as a free lunch. The cost savings made possible to taxpayers by the county's system, with its partial reliance on unpaid firefighters, do not come cost-free.
What the city gets for its money is a higher level of fire protection. Fire-insurance ratings - which take into account a variety of fire-suppression factors - are a measure of that level. The city is rated at 3, closer-in areas of the county are rated at 6, more remote areas of the county at 9 or 10. (The lower the number, the higher the level of protection.)
In close-in county areas, there is little or no difference in fire-insurance costs between city and county. In the county's more remote areas, however, the owner of a $75,000 brick home built in 1970 might pay about $45 more a year for his premiums.
To say that the city buys a higher level of fire protection is not to say that the city's paid firefighters are better than the county's volunteers. Indeed, county personnel by every indication performed impressively last week in fighting the Holiday Inn-Salem fire.
Nor is this to say that city fire service is problem-free. On the contrary, the city's force has its personnel problems, and Roanoke isn't paying enough attention to the safety risk posed by low water pressure in some areas.
Nor, for that matter, is this to say that all parts of the Roanoke Valley should have an equally high level of protection. That would be absurd.
To run the water lines, build the stations, install the hydrants, buy the equipment and employ the firefighters to give outlying and thinly populated Catawba the same level of fire protection as downtown Roanoke, for example, would be prohibitively and mindlessly expensive.
This is to say, however, that (a) unpaid volunteers typically do not man a fire station around the clock, nor should they be expected to; (b) most county stations are unmanned after midnight; and (c) this slows response times.
Figures reported Friday in the news sections of this newspaper confirm the point. And it is why it took 15 minutes after the fire was belatedly reported to get a pumper from the Fort Lewis station to the burning Holiday Inn-Salem 3.5 miles away.
For an unmanned station, that may be pretty good. But shouldn't the county be paying to man it? Fort Lewis adjoins some rather rural areas of the county, but also some rapidly growing areas.
The big problem with fire service in the Roanoke Valley isn't the quality of any of its practitioners, but the fact that its parts don't share the same communications or dispatch facilities, and aren't organized as a unified operation serving the valley.
Still, as Roanoke County is discovering in a host of areas, urbanization costs money.