Fire district grapples with growth

EAST MANATEE — Thirty-six years ago, what’s now the East Manatee Fire Rescue District formed when a group of volunteer firemen agreed to protect a growing area near the Braden River.

Those unpaid firefighters, dubbed “The Tin Orphans,” had one truck, one makeshift fire station with a tin roof and hand-me-down supplies and equipment. They responded to mostly brush fires on farmland.

Fast forward to today, and EMFR has six fire stations, two more in the works and a dozen or more residential streets added to it maps annually.

And along with that growth has come a whole new set of problems. The latest? District officials are working with developers who want to make new streets smaller as fire trucks only get bigger.

East Manatee County Fire Rescue Chief Byron Teates, Deputy Chief of Administration Lee Whitehurst and Deputy Chief/Fire Marshal George Ellington deal with the back and forth from developers and their plans.

“The problem has been and always will be about access,” Whitehurst said. “The size of the average fire truck continues to grow while the size of your average home lot, street width and cul-de-sac length is shrinking. We need to be able to respond to a call and have enough room to turn around and go back the other way.”

And fire truck length is a major issue on which fire officials are working with developers.

In October, EMFR purchased a 100-foot ladder truck that firefighters are still receiving training on before it goes into use later this quarter. The district’s other ladder truck has a 75-foot ladder.

Teates said it wasn’t a problem 30 years ago when volunteer firefighters were responding to fires on large farms and lots.

“We understand developers save money by building narrower roads and cul-de-sacs, but it’s our job to make sure it’s a happy, safe medium,” Teates said.

Ellington, who oversees the district’s fire prevention division, spends several hours a week at the Manatee County Administration building, overseeing permitting plans and working with developers to make sure proposed East County developments meets the codes and the fire department’s ability to get in and out of developments.

“We get more than half a dozen new streets a year added to our maps,” Ellington said. His department also checks and oversees safety plans for more than 1,900 East County businesses. In 2007, the district only had 700 businesses to oversee.

The district also oversees firefighter training, daycare and school inspections, plans reviews, arson investigations, the testing of hydrants and tree trimming to make sure foliage isn’t too low for emergency vehicles.

“Now we’re dealing with businesses that have five to seven stories instead of buildings that used to have no more than three stories,” Ellington said. “And the trees planted in the new developments are now big enough to be in our way.”

Managing the pipeline
Serving new developments is a complicated challenge as well.

Teates sits in a conference room chair in late December, pointing to two areas of East County where his next two stations, stations 7 and 8, will be located.

“The key is trying to forecast the growth,” Teates said. “To guess what’s going to happen.”

And no matter how hard they try, Teates said he can’t predict the future.

In 2005, East Manatee Fire Rescue purchased 20 acres along Lakewood Ranch Boulevard for the site at 3220 Lakewood Ranch Blvd., where the Central Fire Station and the district’s administrative offices now sit.

In 2008, construction began on the administrative complex.

But the Central Fire Station wasn’t built until 2010. During the recession, construction stopped on homes the district was planning on for the Central Fire Station’s viability. No new homes meant no new station.

Plans and man hours used to create plans for the fire house were made two years too early.

“It takes rooftops to support a fire station, and those rooftops were delayed,” Teates said. “Some things are just out of control, and we learned valuable lessons from that construction delay. We saw infrastructure started and stopped in its tracks for six to seven years. So areas we thought we were needed in immediately were just pulled back and had to wait it out.”

The district also had to delay equipment purchases and the hiring of staff.

While Teates said it’s impossible to gauge from the time when a developer announces plans to build a new community to the time when Manatee County delivers the certificate of occupancies for the new homes (that’s when EMFR gets taxing district dollars for the new homes), he says the district learned from the recession to be more careful before it builds new facilities.

And now, as construction picks back up, Teates and his administration prepare and wait for the growth to occur and the certificates of occupancy to be delivered before plans move forward with new stations planned for 18000 S.R. 70 E. and 17900 S.R. 64 E. The district already owns the property at those locations.

“The key is when to plan for them and build them now,” Teatess said. “The growth is starting to happen there but we have to figure out when to build these facilities.”

For now, the district has plans to design Station 7 in fiscal year 2017-18 and start construction the following year. It’s estimated the 7,000-square-foot fire station will cost $1.75 million to build.

Those two new fire station locations are pinpointed in the district’s five-year plan, which notes they are prime locations for future growth.

Five-year Plan for Future Facilities
• FY 2014-15 — Plan and design the replacement of Station 2 for $100,000. Demolish and construct new Station 2 for $1.5 million. Plan, design and build a training town on Station 2 site for $250,000. Project will be complete by Sept. 30, 2015.

• FY 2015-16 — Nothing planned.

• FY 2016-17 — Nothing planned.

• FY 2017-18 — Plan and design Station 7 for $300,000.

• FY 2018-19 — Construct 7,000 square-foot Station 7 for estimated $1.75 million cost.