Consultant urges move toward full-time firefighters, two new stations 

Council seeks further guidance on potential locations 

by Judy Stringer 

Jan. 28 city council workshop 

A consulting firm that assessed Hudson’s fire and EMS services recommends the city increase the number of paid firefighters and construct at least one new fire station. 

Vaughan Miller, a public safely specialist with K2M Design, told Hudson City Council that reducing fire response times will require the city to move away from its volunteer firefighter model, update and ideally replace its main fire station, and ultimately consider adding a second station to the northern part of the city. 

Specifically, the firm advised Hudson hire four full-time firefighters – at a cost of about $1.2 million annually – and invest roughly $400 million to address immediate facility needs at the Oviatt fire station and to add dorm spaces for 24/7 staffing. 

Longer term, it suggests the city build a new safety center – at an estimated cost of $15-$20 million – next to the existing facility and plan for a satellite station that would increase response times in the northern and western edges of the city. 

Hudson began exploring the need for fire department changes last summer, hiring K2M Design for a formal assessment in September. In November, several residents, including two couples who lost their homes to fires, urged Hudson City Council to move quickly in transitioning the fire station to a 24-hour staffing model, arguing the current “paid-on-call/volunteer” structure was outdated. Currently, the fire station is not staffed overnight or on the weekend, leading to longer overall response times. 

At the Jan. 28 workshop, Robert Finn, a senior manager at Matrix Consulting Group, said Hudson’s current fire “turnout times” – the time it takes for a unit to leave the station after receiving an emergency call – are substantially longer than the “industry best practice” of 90 seconds. 

Matrix’s analysis of local data suggests that for 90% of fire calls, it takes duty chiefs, often responding from their home, 2 minutes and 29 seconds to leave for the scene. Fire suppression units, meanwhile, took 8 minutes and 30 seconds, which accounts for travel time to the station and putting on gear to be ready to leave. 

“So, you can see, by staffing the units,” Finn said, “there’s the opportunity for a 7-minute improvement in performance in terms of your response time to the structural fires and other fire incidents.” 

Suppression unit travel times are also “longer than expected for suburban communities,” according to Finn. He said the Center for Public Safety Excellence recognizes a 6-minute-and-30-second standard for travel to the scene. Due to having a single station, Finn stated, Hudson’s travel time for 90% of its calls averages 7 minutes and 53 seconds. 

“A little longer than what you would typically expect in the community of this size. But again, the geography, the limited ability to get north of the interstate, the increasing frequency of calls to the [northwestern] portion of the community – all drive these longer response times,” he said. 

Finn stressed that his analysis shows the current safety center location provides the best coverage for a “single-site response location,” meeting that 6-minute-and- 30-second standard for “30% of the city and 44% of your current population.” 

A second station in the northern half is advised “based on the current road network and the projections and where the calls are occurring,” he added. 

Two-station solution? 

Among council feedback was a desire to see response-time data from neighboring communities and more information related to locations for any new builds. 

Council member Skylar Sutton asked if there are scenarios that might provide greater overall coverage by not having a downtown fire station. Both he and council president Chris Foster questioned if building two decentralized smaller stations – equal to the cost of constructing one large safety building – might be a better solution. 

City Manager Thom Sheridan said he will coordinate with the consultants on providing some location options as well fleshing out more cost and financing information for a future discussion.