Fire Department Is Seeking $49 Million More for Changes

Staffing, Response Time Not Keeping Pace, Chief Says

Prince William's fire and rescue response has changed only incrementally since the early 1980s, even as larger, more elaborate houses have sprouted and spread across the county's landscape, Fire Chief Kevin McGee said last week.

Now, the department is looking to update to regional and national standards, prompted in large part by the death of firefighter Kyle R. Wilson last year.

The improvement plan calls for spending $49.3 million over five years on recommended initiatives such as adding 108 uniformed firefighters and 10 civilians. This would be on top of the Board of County Supervisors' adopted five-year staffing plan of $42.1 million for the fire and rescue department, which calls for 139 uniform and nine civilian positions.

The county "has changed and we need to basically retool our fire and rescue to be able to respond to the new threat," McGee said. "We recognize a need, and it was brought home to us in a very tragic way, that we need to make a more significant shift in how we operate."

Wilson's April 16 death was the first in the department's 41-year history. A critical internal investigation found flaws in the "organizational preparation" of the department and made more than 200 recommendations.

County Executive Craig S. Gerhart called implementing these actions "a moral imperative."

"We can't do it all in the first year, but saying we can't afford it is not an acceptable response to people who put their life on the line," he told the board Tuesday. "It makes a down payment and sets in place a commitment."

McGee, who has been with the department for 28 years, said that the money is needed to address the changing risks firefighters are seeing. Crews are no longer responding to fires in 1,500- and 2,000-square-foot homes, he said. Instead, they are called to 6,000-square-foot houses such as the one on Marsh Overlook Drive where Wilson died.

Wilson, 24, was searching the second floor for occupants, not knowing that they had escaped, when conditions rapidly changed. Within seconds, visibility decreased from clear to zero, and the temperature rose from 100 to 800 degrees, officials said. Despite repeated rescue attempts, he remained trapped.

The report found that "there was an insufficient effective firefighting force to perform all the necessary, concurrent critical tasks associated with firefighting activities."

Much of the money proposed for next year would go toward personnel, including the manpower needed to increase staffing on engines and specialty vehicles. A fire and explosives investigator would also be added to the fire marshal's office. During the investigation, McGee said the department found that it was leaning substantially on neighboring jurisdictions for assistance.

Another major change comes in how the department will measure response times. It will use the national standard of four minutes for fire and basic life support response vs. the old standard based on geographic location, ranging from 6 1/2 minutes for high-density areas to 11 minutes for low-density areas. Twenty-five percent of the county is not covered by a four-minute response.

"I would say the complexion of how we operate as a fire and rescue system is going to be enhanced in a way where it is going to look different in five years than it does today," McGee said.