College Station Fire Department seeks mutual agreement with Bryan Fire Department

The Eagle
Bailey Brown
February 9, 2023

Fire departments in both Bryan and College Station are looking to negotiate a proposed mutual aid agreement that would mitigate any jurisdiction having more resource availability than the other.

During Thursday night’s College Station City Council meeting, Fire Chief Richard Mann presented the council with a proposed agreement. In 2021, Mann said his department identified there was a problem with the amount of resources they were sending to Bryan.

“In August of 2021 we implemented some dispatch changes to our lowest equity calls: our Alpha and Bravo level calls,” Mann said. “In January of last year we implemented the Charlie level calls — one step higher in equity level — to implement some dispatch changes to those as well. It had a significant impact. Following that additional change for the year of 2022, we saw a 52% decrease in the amount of EMS calls that we have responded to into the city of Bryan.”

In 2022, the College Station Fire Department responded to Bryan 432 times with an ambulance, Mann said, and Bryan responded 117 times to College Station.

“It is still about a 4-1 relationship we have with them on EMS calls,” he said. “And unfortunately, as we all know, there is a dollar value to that.”

College Station transported 289 of those 432 Bryan residents to hospitals, a billable service of $517,000, according to Mann.

“As of date we have collected $178,000 of that and recouped through billing. We are still about $340,000 in the [red] on this,” he said. “We are still off and we are continuing to work with them on that because that is the challenge that we continue to have.”

Bryan and College Station each have four ambulances, however College Station has an additional peak time ambulance, Mann said. Both cities are adding an additional ambulance this year. Mann said CSFD has 167 firefighters and Bryan Assistant Fire Chief Jason Nored said BFD has 145. In order to mitigate this discrepancy between the cities, Mann said both departments are working on a transition from automatic aid to mutual aid.

College Station had an automatic aid agreement with the city of Bryan since 1997, and during the meeting city staff noted that in January they sent a letter to Bryan to terminate the agreement, and should have a finished proposal to bring to the council in the next month.

Mann described automatic aid as sending the closest ambulance that is automatically dispatched based on GPS location; and independent of resource status of either jurisdiction; and independent of criticality. He identified a mutual aid system that includes interjurisdictional request for assistance; the capability to accept or reject the request; allowance for resource capacity to be considered; and safeguards will be implemented for critical call types.

“Our biggest concern is making sure that we don’t have a critical call that gets missed in that mutual aid environment. We have proposed the best alternative, which is to continue automatic aid for fire calls,” he told the council. “But on the EMS side, our recommendation would be to go to mutual aid to go to the lower equity calls ... and maintain automatic aid for those high equity calls, Delta and Echo level.”

This proposed mutual aid system would make sure that the most critical patients, regardless of where they are, would get the closest available unit, Mann said.

“However, there still remains an imbalance between the cities so to make sure both jurisdictions are taken care of there needs to be some type of financial adjustment at the end of each fiscal year to make sure both communities are made whole,” he said. “That may mean we pay the city of Bryan if they came here more, and they pay us if we went there more.”

Councilman William Wright asked Mann if there is a substantial amount owed to the city of Bryan, based off of services provided by Bryan to them. Mann said he didn’t know the exact number, but that it was significantly less than what Bryan owes College Station.

City Manager Bryan Woods said that by averaging out the calls, College Station is going to Bryan four times as often as Bryan firefighters go to College Station.

“One of the reasons we looked at the financial component of it is we want that service that is paramount in the community,” he told the council. “But who pays for it? If we can’t bill all of those services to insurance or someone in the city of College Station, the citizens of College Station pay for that. Currently, if we provide service in the city of Bryan on an ambulance and we bill and can’t provide all of the services, it is the citizens of College Station who pay the difference.”

Additionally, Mann said they responded to 12,000 calls in 2022; and 67% of calls were EMS calls and 33% were non EMS type calls. They had 317 structure fire calls in 2022, and he said they have been able to maintain response times, despite the increase in the population and despite the increase they have seen in the call volume growth.

Regarding the new Fire Station #7 recently approved as a bond project by voters, Mann said they are currently evaluating location options and construction types. He also addressed some on-going challenges for his department, including medical supply costs and availability; apparatus production times; maintaining inspection cycle; recruitment and retention. He also plans to start an invest local initiative.