The goal is a response time of five minutes or less 80 percent of the time.

            With only two fire stations for a coverage district of 44 square miles (the town with 25 square miles and the county adding 19) where 40,000 people live, the response times can and have exceeded that goal.

            The average time for fire trucks from Station #1 on East Elm Avenue to get to the west side of town has been 6.07 minutes and even longer, 6.51 minutes, to get to the east side of town.

            The average response times to calls for Station #2 on Ligon Mill Road have been even longer, 7.39 minutes. Part of the reason has been that the station had only two staff members until recently and the paid staff had to wait for volunteers before leaving the station.

            Wake Forest Fire Chief Jerry Swift and his team have been analyzing the response times, the staffing and organization and the risks in the town and county fire districts, and have summed them up in a report, “Wake Forest Fire Department Standard of Response Coverage.”

            Their conclusion is that the town and county area needs three more fire stations:

• Station #3 currently planned on or near Wake Union Church Road and the Kearney Road intersection. It will be on land donated by developer Jim Adams, but the exact location depends on the demolition of the old Parker-Hannifin building and the exact realignment of Wake Union Church Road. Swift said the other two stations may be built before #3.

• Station #4 will be on Wait Avenue between the entrance to the new Bishop’s Grant subdivision and Carrie Mae Road, which is nearly to Averette Road.

• Station #5 will be on Forestville Road between Song Sparrow Drive and the Thornrose subdivision.

            Together the five stations will be able to provide the desired response of five minutes or less 80 percent of the time now and in the immediate future.

            A sixth station will be needed to the north, Swift said, if the town continues to annex and grow into the southern part of Franklin County.

            Swift plans to equip the three stations to meet the special requirements of their areas – county subdivisions without water systems or hydrants to the west and east, Heritage to the south with many large homes.

            He will put one pumper tanker each in Stations #3 and #4 that can carry 2,000 gallons of water. For Station #5, which will cover the Heritage area where there are large homes with steeply sloping rooflines, Swift plans to station a 105-foot Quint engine with a ladder that can respond as a pumper.

            Within the 1.5-mile radius circle around each fire station, there will be an immediate coverage area of 5 square miles.

            The need for a faster response and more water was demonstrated earlier this year when a large house on Welcome Drive in Waterfall Plantation on Thompson Mill Road burned to the ground. The subdivision was built to county standards without water and sewer.

            Swift is projecting it will cost $16 million to buy the land, build the stations, furnish them, equip them and staff them. It will be expensive, he said, but homeowners will find their insurance rates dropping with the faster, better protection.

            There is a short-range, faster alternative that would provide a station before the permanent facilities are built. “You can put in mobile trailers [for the office and bedrooms], put up a metal shed and run out of that building,” he said. “You could even buy some property with a house, upgrade the house to be the firehouse and use the garage or a shed for the trucks.” Swift said other towns and cities, Charlotte in particular, often do this.

            When the three more stations are built and fully staffed, Swift said, the Wake Forest Fire Department with a staff of 67 will be the third largest in the county behind Raleigh and Cary.

            Each new fire station would have a paid staff of four men per shift, three shifts per station. Each shift is 24 hours.

            With the new personnel, Swift said the department will need three battalion chiefs, one for each shift, a training chief, an apparatus technician for maintenance and repair and a human resources director with at least one administrative assistant. Swift projects adding the personnel in the next two budget years.

            As would be expected given the rapid growth in and around Wake Forest, the number of incidents firefighters must respond to has risen sharply since 2002.

            Currently, the department responds to about 2,000 incidents a year, 70 percent of them EMS or medical calls because of the department’s first-responder designation.

            In 2002, the department responded to 1,569 calls or an average of 4.3 a day.

            In 2006, with about 100 days of the year left, the firefighters have responded to 1,514 calls, an average of 5.7 a day.

            Unfortunately, emergencies tend to occur in multiples during bad weather or because of some other problem. This summer there have been two multiple emergency occasions each within an hour in Wake Forest.

            On June 23, the lightning from a severe thunderstorm hit several buildings and sparked a fire that gutted a home at 311 Lilliput Lane in Olde Mill Stream subdivision. Then-Chief David Williams had to call in mutual aid from the Stony Hill, Falls and Rolesville fire departments because Wake Forest firefighters were also responding to other calls. Those were: 1) an electrical fire at a home at 6501 Austin Creek Drive; 2) fire alarms activated by lightning at the River Mill apartments, 1500 River Mill Drive, and the Wake Forest Presbyterian Church at 12605 Capital Boulevard where lightning damaged the electrical and phone system and caused minor damage; and 3) a water rescue request on Capital Boulevard where there was flooding from the storm waters. Swift says the average response time to this rash of calls within an hour was eight minutes, 13 seconds.

            “Every available piece of Wake Forest Fire Department apparatus was busy handling these overwhelming incidents,” the response coverage report says. “Units from as far away as Wendell were being dispatched to handle incidents within our district due to the unavailability of Wake Forest units.”

            On Aug. 30, there were nine incident calls to firefighters within 53 minutes. “Lightning caused moderate structural damage to a home at 1008 Marshall Farm Road (but no fire damage),” Swift reported. “Lightning also ran in on the gas line of a home at 1012 Broyhill Court [where] fire conditions were present underneath the floor and a portion of the floor had to be removed to reach the fire. Another lightning strike occurred with no damage at 613 Middlebridge. We also responded to a heavily involved outbuilding fire at 8117 Thompson Mill Road.” There were also several miscellaneous calls for assistance. Swift said the average response time to the incidents he listed was just over five minutes.

            Swift has purchased an eight-person raft for swift-water rescues, and he plans to train the entire department in swift-water rescue techniques. That will include the swift-water class on the Nantahala River, which he has taken. The department also has a Polaris ATV vehicle now, and Swift said it will be used for off-road rescue sites, such as greenways.

            The new ladder truck will be a specialty piece, with the crews manning it trained for primary and secondary victim searches as well as technical rescues: water, high-angle, trench and confined space and vehicle extrications.