Nearly 70 percent of the state's fire departments reported last year to be in desperate need of new equipment and more staff. Colorado Springs Fire Department is in better shape comparatively but still running to emergencies in fire engines from the 1990s.
Chief Randy Royal sat down with News 5 Investigates to talk about how his department is keeping the reserve fleet running every day and what weighs most heavily on his mind.
Fresh off winning Colorado's Fire Chief of the Year award, Royal should be riding high. But he shared that he's constantly thinking about the logistics of running a department with aging equipment in a rapidly growing city. The department has at least two trucks in its reserve fleet purchased in 1996 and 1997. They sub-in every day for vehicles that are getting regular or necessary maintenance.
"Yeah, it makes me nervous. Yeah. Because I mean, it could, you know, we don't want it to fail in a critical moment. But I tell you, we have a very good shop with really good mechanics, and they stay very busy," Royal said.
At the fire department's Logistics and Transportation Center, it's up to specially trained mechanics to work on the fleet of 40 vehicles, all in varying condition.
"If you look, I mean, literally our apparatus ... they're they're falling apart. The welds are breaking, things are cracking," Lt. Aaron McConnellogue said while pointing to a metal platform extending off the back of one fire truck.
Most departments replace their fire engines after 12 to 15 years of use. Colorado Springs Fire is on a 17 year replacement plan.
"But 17 years is when we place the order. Then we're waiting another two to three years. So really you'll have a vehicle that's 19 to 20 years old that it's in front-line condition out there every day," McConnellogue said.
Manufacturers no longer make some of the specialized parts needed for the older vehicles, leaving CSFD mechanics to make them on site. Right now, the crew is completely rebuilding a fire truck's engine in between servicing a fleet of 40 vehicles.
The logistics of keeping up with regular maintenance and extra work on the older trucks while simultaneously ensuring all 23 fire stations are equipped and ready to respond in an emergency is a challenge, McConnellogue said.
"What we really try to do is we try to maximize the miles out of each vehicle because we have some stations that are very, very busy that are putting on between 15,000 and just over 20,000 calls a year. And we have some stations that are only using the vehicle a couple of thousand miles a year at a slower station. So we get to a point and we start rotating the vehicles around the fleet to extend the life of them," McConnellogue said.
In an assessment of fire department needs conducted by the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, 68 percent of departments said they don't have adequate funding for necessary improvements to their facilities and equipment. Statewide, according to the 2022 survey, departments reported needing to replace 800 apparatus, which amounts to $40.7 million dollars in need.
CSFD is doing what it can to keep the older model fire trucks running, as well as another 15 percent of the fleet with model years in the early 2000s. It doesn't have a choice. Next year, McConnellogue said one new fire engine will cost the department more than $800,000 due to emissions changes required by the EPA that make the trucks more expensive to manufacture.
If it was just replacing existing trucks, that would be one thing. But Chief Royal said that given the growth of the city, the department has five new stations that will need engines in the next few years, including station 25 which is set to open next month.
"It's just it's keeping up with growth really. You know, as our city grows, we know for both us and police that there's needs as you grow as a bigger city and it does impact response times," Royal said.
The department's goal is to get help to a 911 caller within eight minutes 90 percent of the time.
"We haven't been meeting our 90 percent goal. We've been in probably about 84, 84 to 85 percent. We've been below. Part of that is call volume, part of that's growth," Royal said.
A good amount of that growth is on the city's east side, where demand for emergency response is increasing. CSFD's newest station, Station 23, which opened a year ago is already its fourth busiest engine in town.
"So it really showed the need within our community. We're working on Station 25, which is going to open on December 18 on the southeast side of the airport, and then Station 24, which is up by Pikes Peak State College," Royal said.
Last month, the department saw the delivery of three new fire engines, costing more than $700,000 each. With that cost and the inevitable supply chain delays, Royal said that he worries about how they'll provide apparatus for future stations.
The department plans to break ground on Station 24 by Pikes Peak State College next year. The following two stations will be at the intersections of Marksheffel Road and Stetson Hills Boulevard and at Highway 24 and State Route 94. The following two stations will likely be located north and south of Woodmont and Marksheffel Road.
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