
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 21, 1995                   TAG: 9505200018
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: G5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SARAH HUNTLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COUNTY'S VISION FOR A SOLUTION

Roanoke County is committed to having a mix of paid personnel and volunteers, and according to the director of West Virginia's Center for Rural Emergency Medicine, it can work. The key is having standards.

"There are places where a hybrid system works smoothly, ... but there can be no distinctions between paid and volunteers," John Prescott says. "They should have to meet the same expectations and be afforded the same opportunities."

During the past year, both the firefighters' union and volunteers have offered compromise proposals. The union's plan calls for $1.5 million to staff core stations. The volunteers' suggestions hinge on incentives, such as paying them $40 each night they are on duty.

But the most likely scenario is a list of goals released last week. An ad hoc committee, made up of paid and volunteer representatives, county staff and citizens, charted its vision of how the department should work. Over the next six months, work groups will refine the goals and determine ways to meet them.

Here are 10 of the vision's highlights:

Develop guidelines for volunteer officers, including minimum standards for both volunteer fire and rescue officers.

A five-person Quality Assurance Committee should be established to monitor issues relating to level of service, including response and reaction times, training levels, guidelines and staffing.

Roanoke County should continue to focus on reaction times. An acceptable reaction time is less than two minutes.

The county must be committed to providing adequate bunk and shower facilities at all stations, and the "sleep-in" issue should be addressed to reduce reaction times at night.

Every response time over eight minutes should be noted in writing to the Quality Assurance Committee.

Hold a major recruitment drive to increase the number of volunteers.

Hire part-time personnel to assist with staffing.

When volunteers fail to meet the goals for two years, then career staff needs to be placed as primary responders and have volunteers supplement coverage.

Future stations should be staffed 24 hours a day without exception.

Use nationally recognized standards. Just because units are dispatched doesn't mean they are responding with the appropriate staffing or in a timely manner.

by CNB