August 1995 Sully District Council Meeting
by Jeff Parnes
- The August Sully District Council meeting focused on the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department. The presentation covered department services (including emergency services, life safety education and fire prevention), service demands in Sully and the county, and planned and proposed service expansion.
- The Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department's emergency services goal is to provide a five-minute travel response to at least 95 percent of the county's population. Sully district currently has 4 fire and rescue stations within its borders out of the total of 36 county-wide stations. These stations provide emergency medical services (EMS) including advanced and basic life support, fire suppression and technical services including handling of hazardous materials, technical and water rescues.
- The Fire and Rescue Department also provides life safety education. Ongoing programs such as fire detector battery replacement (Battery for Life) are combined with seasonal safety programs (fireworks, Halloween, Christmas, ice safety and prom night) and business and county agency support (general fire safety and prevention and Fire Warden education and training). The department is increasing its cultural outreach with its home safety booklet available in five languages. Its "Every Step of the Way" Program is a safety program targeting pre-school age children and the elderly. Project Safe is a third-grade safety program conducted in 134 schools. The department also runs a juvenile fire setters intervention program. It also loans visual smoke detectors in certain cases. The department also conducts various outreach programs during the Fairfax Fair, EMS week and Fire Prevention week.
- In the fire prevention area, the department's goal is to prevent potential problems before they can cause an emergency. The department conducts home safety surveys, inspections, systems testing, arson investigations, and regulates hazardous materials.
- The department's service demands for Sully district closely match the overall county's demands. For Sully EMS is 64.5% of its workload while for the county its 68%. Public service in Sully is 6.5% while for the county it's 5%. Fire suppression counts for 27% of its effort in Sully while its 29% county-wide. The average response time for the county over the past five years was 5.32 minutes, while for Sully it's been 5.82 minutes. The average annual change in emergency incidents over the past four years for Sully district is 8.23% while for the county it's been only 4.06%.
The department's summary statistics show that Sully with 13.4% of the county's population is the most populated district in the county. Although it has higher than average response times, it only had 10.3% of the total county incidents. There has been only 1 fire-related death in Sully since 1990. Even though Sully's service needs are increasing with population, there has been a decrease in cardiac arrest incidents and injury/deaths in vehicles are increasing at lower rates than before.
- The county is expanding the number of fire and rescue stations. Two stations are currently under construction, station 37 in West Centreville and station 38 in Kingstown. The county has five planned stations: station 39 in Fairfax Center, 40 in North Point (Reston), 41 in South Clifton, 42 in Hunter Valley and 43 in Wolf Trap. In order to better utilize existing and planned facilities, the department has initiated peak staffing of emergency apparatus, time of day dispatching and demand based resource allocation. Even so, the county predicts that three additional stations may required after the five planned stations are built. These stations are currently projected for Lee Highway/Pleasant Valley Roads in Sully, and Ox/Hampton Roads and the Engineering Proving Grounds elsewhere in the County.
- The next two Sully District Council meetings will focus on prospective candidates. Both Sully School Board candidates, the incumbent Republican Gary Reese and his Democratic challenger, Margie Wheedleton, will attend the 27 September meeting. At the 25 October meeting we expect the six Republican and Democratic assembly candidates.
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Sully District Council Minutes
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