Northern Lakes response times plummet with new crew, engine

Average response times for the Northern Lakes Fire District have been cut from 14 to 15 minutes to 7 to 8 minutes, almost overnight. That’s down from March 15 through July 6, 2022, to the same time this year.

District Fire Chief Pat Riley attributes the dramatic improvement to 13 new firefighters, a new engine and an airport fire station the district has been using since mid-March.

“It’s relieving, more than anything, that we know that we’re able to do what we’re sworn to do,” Riley said. “It’s what I was put in this position for.”

In 2022, NLFD wasn’t meeting National Fire Protection Association standards for response time.

“It’s a horrible place to be,” Riley said. “And not being able to get out of that position, we weren’t doing the public the best service we could.”

By the standards, responders should arrive on scene within five minutes for 90% of calls.

The Northern Lakes Fire District has also been at least one station and several staff members short of meeting parameters outlined in a Capital Improvement Plan adopted in May 2022.

After a $2 million override levy failed in 2021, Riley and the NLFD commissioners applied for grants and asked cities to approve city impact fee ordinances. The impact fees were adopted in 2022 and allow new businesses and developments to pay for growth. The fees can fund fire equipment and facilities outlined in the capital improvement plan, like fire stations, engines or firefighter equipment.

Impact fees cannot be used to cover wages or salaries, so the NLFD also applied for a SAFER grant, which paid for the onboarding of 13 additional staff in March.

With additional staff, NLFD added manpower at stations one and two and was able to man the Coeur d’Alene Airport fire station temporarily. The airport station is centrally located in the fire district and can support either station one or two crews as needed.

The result has been a 40% reduction in response time.

It also freed up time for firefighters to meet mandatory training requirements, more than doubling the amount of time crews spent training year over year. With more training, crews are also more proficient and have been more effective in saving structures or putting out fires.

“I’m seeing proficiency increases,” Riley said. “We were always good, I know that in my heart, but now what we’re able to do: I’ve seen considerably faster fire knockdowns, we’ve saved more properties since we’ve done this than we’ve ever done before. And our CPR field save successes have increased.”

In 2022, NLFD emergency medical responders were able to recover a heartbeat in cardiac arrests 15% of the time. That jumped to 26% in the same time in 2023, according to data from the Kootenai County Emergency Medical Services System. That could be six lives saved from the additional resources in the district.

But the comparison that made the fire chief “fall out of his chair” in surprise was the reliance on mutual aid. Last year to date, NLFD depended on outside departments 177 times in 1,400 calls for service. This year, that number is just 16 at the same time, with 1,900 calls for service.

“We’re not putting a drain and a heavy reliance on mutual aid,” Riley said. “The bulk of those 177 were simply because we were out on several other calls and we couldn’t handle it. Now we’re doing it a 10th of the time compared to what we were using them for last year. That keeps their units in their cities.”

Before adding an engine, 13 firefighters and manning the airport station, a northern region in the Fire District was one point away from being uninsurable, Riley said. Kootenai County residents could’ve been on the hook for higher insurance premiums or they could have lost coverage.

“By our National Fire Protection Association standard we’re getting to more than 90% of our calls in the allowable time to get to the incident," Riley said.

Before increasing his district’s capacity this spring, Riley felt like he was drinking from a firehose. Now he’s slowed down to feeling like it's a sip from a cup of tea, he said.

But it isn’t time for the fire chief to rest on his laurels.

Riley hopes he can keep the airport station open and manned, but the agreement to man the station expires in November. The Kootenai County Board of Commissioners could decide to renew it then.

The SAFER grant will also expire so salary funding will end for 12 of the 13 new firefighters in 2026.

“Now we’re planning on how to continue the employment with those because the last thing I want to do is close a $4 million firehouse and lay off 12 people,” Riley said.

Construction on a third NLFD station should be complete by around November of this year. When it’s operational, each station will lose one firefighter to man that station.

But when grant funding ends, continuing the level of service will depend on money. And right now Riley isn’t sure where that will come from.