Last week, I wrote a column that upset a chief. In the column, I talked about the lack of resource measurement in San Diego County based on a conversation I had with Stewart Gary of Citygate Associates, who was hired to do a regional fire-deployment study that assessed the county’s resources and shortcomings. I talked about his findings. Gary said the county did not have an accurate account of its resources and, in some cases, chiefs were fudging response times. I didn’t mean to upset the chief when I wrote this. I know fire management is a tough job and that more of the U.S. needs to improve communication regionally with mutual-aid partners. In fact, I love San Diego County. I lived there for more than four years in the late 1990s in a community called Oceanside, right next to Camp Pendleton. So I know firefighters have a lot to contend with there: urban and wildland fires and fighting traffic on “The 5.” I was just relaying what the consultant had said he found surprising: San Diego County, like many of our counties, needs to do better at tracking resources and providing accurate response times. More honesty needs to be practiced, and I agree with one reader who commented that the fire service needs to admit what the true response times and resource capabilities are. Until that happens, data always will be estimated. “Someone has to be willing to stand up in front of the administrators, at whatever level, and admit that it takes X minutes for X thing to happen,” he wrote. “What that will show is how slow we truly are in responses.” And that is all I meant in my column: Chiefs need to honestly and accurately report resources and response times in order to better serve the public. In return, political purse string holders need to take the data and invest money into areas of need. With that in mind, I’d like to reach out to chiefs. If you struggle with measuring resources and are under political pressure to fudge the data, please e-mail me . I’d like to learn more about the issue and share any solutions I may find.
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Sorry, San Diego County
