West Des Moines Fire Chief Wants $600,000 to Add Firefighters, Staff Station Built in 2007

Firefighter shortages are increasingly leaving residents of a neighborhood in the southwest part of the city vulnerable, West Des Moines Fire Chief Don Cox told the City Council Monday.

Cox asked the council to approve positions for six new firefighters to fill a gap in service at Station 19 at South 81st Street and Mills Civic Parkway, built in 2007 to serve a rapidly growing area of West Des Moines, but never staffed.

The cost would be about $600,000, or about $100,000 per firefighter with salary and benefits considered, according to a report in the Des Moines Register.

Mayor Steve Gaer said city officials don’t dispute the need for additional firefighters, but called that cost “staggering.”

“I think we all believe that the station needs to be manned,” Councilman Russ Trimble said, “but it’s going to take some significant resources to do that.”

Currently, the fire department has 45 full-time firefighters, about a dozen to 15 of whom work around-the-clock at stations throughout the city, and 45 paid on-call firefighters.

Station 19 Unstaffed Since Built in 2007

In a workshop meeting with the council, Cox said the need to staff the fire station was illustrated when it took firefighters more than 10 minutes to respond to a fire Saturday less than half a mile away from Station 19.

Paid, on-call staff there would have shaved the response time to the fire in the 200 block of South 83rd Street to six or seven minutes, Cox said. Instead, the alarm was answered by firefighters at the fire station at 51st Street and Grand Avenue.

Until firefighters arrived, a neighbor reportedly helped keep the fire, which started in a pile of mulch under the back porch of the house, under control with a garden hose. Still, it caused about $25,000 damage. No one was home at the time.

Of 2,600 calls for service last year, only 200 were for fires, the newspaper reported. The remainder were Emergency Medical Services calls. Ninety percent of the time, the fire department hits its goal of responding within 6½ minutes of dispatch, according to the newspaper.

The area served by Station 19 has a population of 6,690 people living in 4,600 dweling units, including a senior living complex. Cox said the construction of a new Waukee elementary school in the area increases the need for more fire protection services.