UNIFIED RESPONSE: Strength in Numbers
When your house is on fire, you need emergency assistance NOW. You want the closest fire units to be dispatched to your address immediately. But what if you live near the city boundary and the closest fire engine and ladder truck actually belong to another city? Or what if the fire engine from the station down the street is already on a call, who will respond to your house fire? Having the closest unit respond immediately to an emergency - regardless of jurisdictional boundaries - is the key. Thanks to the efforts of 11 Fire Chiefs in Southern California, the citizens in their cities now enjoy this type of coordinated assistance.
It began with a tri-city collaboration in 1979, when the cities of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena agreed to operate as a borderless system for fire incidents dispatched by Verdugo Fire Communications Center. The success of this system later prompted the suggestion that all 11 of the cities in the local area should enter into a similar collaboration. The details were ironed out at monthly Verdugo Task Force meetings, with input and direction from the Fire Chiefs, over a period of about two years. Effective February 14, 2005, this collaboration was christened Unified Response and expanded to cover 11 cities: Alhambra, Arcadia, Burbank, Glendale, Monrovia, Monterey Park, Pasadena, San Gabriel, San Marino, Sierra Madre and South Pasadena.
Unified Response essentially merged dozens of aid agreements between the 11 fire departments into a single automatic aid agreement. This eliminated the time-consuming element inherent in mutual aid agreements, where permission to share resources is sought and obtained before the units can be dispatched. When your house is on fire, an additional five-minute delay can mean the difference between moderate damage and a total loss. No such permission is required with an automatic aid agreement; the communications center immediately dispatches the closest available units and everyone works together to handle the crisis.
The beauty of Unified Response is that it expands the amount and availability of personnel and equipment that fire departments can use daily for help, without delay. One city might otherwise have three engines and a Battalion Chief to respond; under Unified Response, they have access to 40 engines, 11 trucks, 5 water tenders, and other specialized units such as hazmat and USAR. The current plan also shares rescue ambulances on an automatic basis with only a portion of the cities, but that could change in the future. This sharing of specialized apparatus among multiple cities is a prime example of agency cooperation. The collaboration has also been helpful in supporting requests for federal and state grant funding because of the larger multi-jurisdictional service area.
It is our hope that Unified Response will be the foundation for other joint opportunities, allowing us to leverage each other's strengths, resources and experience for mutual benefit.
OES Region I, Area C Coordinator
