Bend Fire plans urgent changes to emergency care

The Bend Fire Departments emergency response crews are urgently changing how they do business, thanks to a bond voters passed in May.

Fire Chief Larry Langston shared details with NewsChannel 21 Thursday about the department’s plan for the extra $2 million it will receive annually for the next five years.

Starting in January, the department will be implementing a major makeover, with one simple goal: cutting down response times by nearly a third and saving lives in the process.

“In the city, we want to be in the six-minute range; in the rural district, we want to be in the eight-minute range,” Langston said.

Battalion Chief Jeff Blake said it will be the first public program of its kind in Oregon.

“Kind of reinvent fire service a little bit — that is cutting-edge,” Blake said.

The goal is to increase staff by 30 percent — hire up to 35 new employees — nearly double the number of responding units, and create two new programs.

“Fire service has changed,” Blake said. “We’re not just responding to fire calls. We’re more of an all risk agency. It will put the right unit to the right call.”

The new, tiered system will work like this: A new EMT program will be added alongside the department’s firefighter paramedic program. EMTs will respond to all basic life support calls — that’s any medical call the department does not consider a true emergency.

“We’re seeing more and more seniors, because I think there’s an aging population, just a lot more assistance needed by seniors,” Langston said.

Fire officials said the new program will free up advanced paramedics for true emergencies. That can include cardiac arrest, strokes, bad accidents and other life-threatening emergencies.

Another program will devote a new unit to prevention.

“That will help handle a lot of our service calls, so our illegal open burns, our fire alarm calls, those types of things,” Blake said.

For firefighters, the big changes can’t come soon enough.

“This (Thursday) morning, I’ve had six calls all at once to the point where I have all my engines out, all my medics out, and I’ve had to call in for a mutual-aid resource from Sunriver,” Blake said, who adding that the problem is becoming more frequent.

Fire officials said the new programs are designed to be efficient and cost-saving. Langston said the new EMTs will not be unionized and will work for lower wages because they are not as skilled as firefighter paramedics.

New hiring will start in January, and the department hopes to begin reducing response times by May. They intend to have the program fully implemented in 18 months.

Quick Facts: The department said about 25 percent of all fire calls are service-related, the rest medical and emergency. About 60 percent of all medical calls are non-life-threatening.