Old Buckingham Station Apartment Complex Fire - (Chesterfield, Virginia - May 19, 1995) » Fire Department and Emergency Services

The Chesterfield Fire Department is a combination career and volunteer department that operates from 15 stations. It is staffed by 325 career personnel and 350 volunteers. Chesterfield County’s population is 233,000 and it measures approximately 446 square miles. In 1994, the fire department reported a total of 17,653 EMS, fire and other emergency calls.

Out of the 15 stations, the department operates some 23 engines, 5 trucks, 4 tankers, 3 heavy duty rescue squads, an airport crash rescue vehicle and a number of specialty vehicles for hazmat, underwater dive rescue, brush, lighting and air mask support. A combined fire and police mobile command vehicle is also available. The department continuously staffs four advanced life support (ALS) ambulances with career personnel. An additional five ambulances are staffed during the daytime with career personnel and at night with volunteer members. These five ambulances are typically ALS in the daytime and basic life support (BLS) at night. An additional four all volunteer rescue squads are provided in the county.

Career personnel operate in a three platoon system of 24 hours on duty with 48 hours off. The county is geographically divided into three battalions with a career battalion chief on duty in each area. The senior battalion chief on duty is the overall shift commander and typically responds to the scene of any working fire in the county. The senior battalion chief in each platoon reports to the deputy chief of emergency operations. The operations deputy also supervises the emergency medical and med-flight functions. A second deputy chief supervises support services including training and safety, fire prevention, maintenance and logistics, administrative services, and information services. The two deputy chiefs report to the chief of the department who is also the county’s coordinator of emergency services.

Minimum staffing on both engines and trucks is three and many companies will typically have four personnel. Staffing is typically higher at nights when volunteers will sleep in the stations along with career staff. Two stations are staffed entirely with volunteers, five stations are staffed entirely with career personnel and eight stations are combination career and volunteer. In these combined stations, typically two separate engines are provided; one for the career staff and the other for volunteers.

Fire hydrant location and spacing will depend upon the area of the county. Although water mains may be present, fire hydrants are installed only as the land is developed along the roadways. The location and spacing would be based on the size and occupancy of the development. Where new water mains are extended into developing land, hydrant location and spacing is usually reviewed with the fire prevention bureau. In this project, hydrant spacing adjustments were made to recognize that all of the apartment buildings were being protected by automatic sprinklers. As a result, the hydrant spacing in the complex exceeded the typical 300 to 500 feet spacing used for multifamily residential buildings.

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