SAUGUS — A consulting firm tasked with conducting a feasibility study on whether the town needs a third firehouse has recommended that one be built on the other side of Route 1. Now comes the next step.
Municipal Resources, Inc. (MRI) was asked to do an assessment of the department, which included analyzing the effectiveness of the town’s fire and emergency services. A major part of that study dealt with finding out whether, based on a four-year survey, a station was indeed needed on the west side of town.
That study revealed that 38 percent of the responses made by the first department from 2015-19 were not able to achieve the recommended six-minute response time from the first receipt of a call to the arrival of the first unit at the location.
Simply put, the Town of Saugus has outgrown its fire department, the study concluded, as the benchmark achievement rate for a town of Saugus’ size and population is 90 percent. And that concerns Town Manager Scott Crabtree.
“Public safety has always been a top priority with this administration,” he said. “I think these reports and studies, with input from the different departments and town meeting members and committees, help us look at this from 30,000 feet and put a road map together to successfully move forward.”
Currently, the town has two fire stations, one at the public safety center on Hamilton Street and the other on Essex Street, adjacent to the Anna Parker Playground.
The report found that the two main areas that fell outside the recommended four-minute drive time for first responders were west of Route 1 and north of Walnut Street. Therefore, the report concluded last week, the town would be well-served if it built a third station west of Route 1, as having one in that area would eliminate the current service gaps in the aforementioned parts of town.
The MRI study stated that the location of a new facility will have a “significant positive impact” on cutting down the drive time to respond to emergencies in the two areas it mentioned. It also concluded that service demand is increasing for the fire department, and its efforts to adhere to the National Fire Protection Association-recommended four-minute benchmark is causing a strain on personnel.
One of the reasons why this is happening, the report said, is the number of businesses and other establishments on Route 1, as well as areas west of the highway which have been built up, have resulted in more service requests. As a result, the NFPA benchmark is often not met.
The solution, MRI feels, is to build a station in the area of Forest Street and the Lynn Fells Parkway. That jibes with an earlier report by the Fire Scope Protection Consultants, which concluded that a third station, in the same area, would provide the best coverage.
The MRI also floated the idea of a deployment model that would build a fire station west of Route 1, but also result in the elimination of Essex Street’s station. Its long-term plan — if considered feasible — is to return to a reconfigured two-station department and to decommission Essex Street. However, the report recommends that, before the town does anything, it needs to conduct its own analysis on the potential ramifications of such a plan.
And that’s exactly what Saugus Fire Lt. Bill Cross, who is also a Town Meeting member, wants to do. Cross agrees the town has outgrown its department and that it should move forward with a feasibility study — and that it should be done quickly.
“This helps us put our ducks in a row,” added Crabtree, noting that the town has had experience with capital improvement plans, as it’s spent more than $200 million on the new middle-high school and other school renovations. “It’s good to be able to move in a path with the public participating and gathering information so people can make informed decisions”
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].