Answering the call: Grapevine Fire Department adds additional medic unit to meet EMS demand

Starting July 1, the Grapevine Fire Department added a new medic unit, while a fire truck was deactivated. The department also increased its minimum daily staffing by one person.

“We’re going to work lean, and we’re going to provide top-notch service to our community," Fire Chief Darrell Brown said.

What you need to know

With 71% of calls to the department for EMS, Brown said the department is making the best decision with what it has to continue meeting the needs of residents.

“The Grapevine Fire Department is not diminishing our service delivery at all,” Brown said. “We’re enhancing it.”

Brown said fire officials originally advocated for adding more personnel, along with a fourth ambulance in 2018. However, a 2021 Fitch & Associates study paid for by the city found that on average, the department’s EMS call volume increased by 2.5%, below the national average of 3% to 7%, from 2017-19.

To align with the types of calls, the department placed a new squad vehicle into service at Grapevine Fire Station No. 1 and deactivated a fire truck, Engine 1. Personnel from that fire engine will be moved to other stations to add a dedicated driver for the department’s blocking engine, which helps protect firefighters responding to calls on highways, and activate a new ambulance.

Brown said the changes are not popular with members of the Grapevine Professional Firefighters Association, but the updated staffing and vehicle deployment is the right thing to do.

Breaking it down

Brown said an increase in the department’s call volume has factored into the need for a fourth ambulance. The department had been utilizing three ambulances since around 2000, which had been sufficient until recently.

“We were set up for a long time where we may have had more than we needed,” Brown said. “Now, we’re to the point where we’re taking over between 7,000 and 8,000 calls a year.”

A spokesperson for the Grapevine Professional Firefighters Association said the association agreed additional EMS response capacity is needed, but had concerns about the reallocation because removing a fire truck at Fire Station No. 1 decreases the department’s firefighting capabilities. There were also additional concerns about an increase in fire-related deaths, despite the decreasing number of fire responses.

Brown said there are plenty of fire engines nearby that can help cover the city.

Some context

The results of the Fitch & Associates study showed the department could reorganize its personnel and put a fourth ambulance into service, which would meet Grapevine’s growing EMS needs and not require the department to hire an additional nine positions.

Based on the reallocation of personnel, the Grapevine Fire Department will have a higher level of minimum staffing, 27, after the change July 1, compared to the 26 before.

However, the professional firefighters association spokesperson said some of the data in the study was flawed because the department could track the number of runs a vehicle made, but not time at the scene of an incident. Had the information been tracked, it may have informed a better overall decision, the spokesperson said.

At an April 7 meeting, council member Duff O’Dell said she would like city staff to consider the cost of adding more personnel to the department.

“We’re using a 20-year-old staffing model,” O’Dell said. “It’s not taking into account how many citizens we’ve added [and] the millions of tourists who come in and use our city services.”

What’s next

Brown said there will need to be conversations about adding a fifth ambulance and additional personnel in future years. To hire the needed nine personnel to add the ambulance, it would cost the city around $1.2 million, he added.

“If calls continue to trend the way they are and EMS continues to be the primary driver of our service, they already know that there’s no way we can do anything else,” Brown said.