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Hernando Today

Pact Would Erase Fire District Boundaries

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By KYLE MARTIN, Hernando Today

Published: February 1, 2008

BROOKSVILLE - The smoke column from a burning house could be seen from the parking lot of the Brooksville Fire Department.

But the fire engines in the bay stood silent.

Instead, a Hernando County Fire Rescue engine stationed across the street roared to life and sped off toward the fire.

Brooksville Fire Chief Tim Mossgrove stood powerless as two other county fire engines raced by his station to assist.

Unless a mutual aid request was made, the city would not be responding.

"That's the type of frustration that's happened in the past," Mossgrove said Thursday.

Now a new agreement seeks to erase those boundaries and allow the automatic response of the closest resource - regardless of the emblem on the apparatus.

The pact goes before the city council for approval on Monday.

"Basically it makes (us) seamless," county Fire Chief Mike Nickerson said. "Like one single department."

Sound familiar?

This was the ultimate objective of a commissioned fire study released at the beginning of the year.

One of the recommendations from the Oregon-based authors of the study was to drop jurisdictional borders and send the most appropriate unit available to maximize public safety.

The county and Spring Hill Fire Rescue departments already employ this "automatic" method. For example, if there was a crash at U.S. 19 and Cortez Boulevard, it makes sense to send an engine from county Station No. 12 less than a mile away.

But if that county unit is tied up somewhere else, why send a unit from the next closest station on Barclay Avenue when there are Spring Hill units nearby?

Instead, county dispatchers will pick up the phone and request a unit from Spring Hill to handle the scene. It's automatic.

If a similar situation arises in the city of Brooksville, or right outside its borders, the incident commander has to expend all of his resources before requesting mutual aid.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out two neighboring departments need to work together," Mossgrove said.

Among the stipulations of the agreement:

The commanding officer on scene is in charge of all the personnel on hand.

Extra units will be released as soon as possible back to their jurisdiction so that coverage isn't compromised.

The requested agency has the right to decline to provide aid if the resources in the district are spread too thin.

Besides dropping the likelihood of your house burning to the ground, residents could see some savings in the pocketbook.

Fire insurance is partly based on an ISO rating, which is earned by a nonprofit company that evaluates a variety of factors.

One of those is the number of units available to a fire department. If this new agreement is approved, it would greatly boost the amount of personnel showing up on the scene.

All signs point to a consolidation of Brooksville's dispatch with the county soon, though a formal contract has yet to be drafted.

Mossgrove said that the agreement doesn't depend on the dispatch transfer, though it would certainly make it easier.

The fire chief is pleased to see all of the county's departments pooling their resources together.

"The fire is no hotter in Brooksville than in Hernando County," he said.

Reporter Kyle Martin can be reached at 352-544-5271 or kmartin@hernandotoday.com.

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