Fire Officials Keeping Track Of Response Times Traffic On Sullivan Is Creating Problems For Firetrucks
Pity the firetruck caught near Spokane Industrial Park in rush hour traffic.
Like the rest of the vehicles on Sullivan Road, it’s probably not going anywhere fast. It may even be completely stopped.
It’s a critical situation fire officials hope to resolve soon. They also plan to monitor the effects of the new Spokane Valley Mall, which is expected to increase traffic congestion in the area.
“We’ll have to watch (the traffic),” said Karl Bold, assistant fire chief at Valley Fire District.
“It’s slowing us down. The firetruck is sometimes coming to a dead stop.”
Most of the time, emergency response times in the Valley meet fire district goals, Bold said.
Fire officials credit the installation of an emergency vehicle pre-emption system in the Valley about 20 years ago. The system allows medic and pumper trucks to signal to upcoming traffic lights, turning them green so they can pass through more quickly. But traffic on Sullivan, especially southbound in the afternoon, now snarls up the trucks before their strobe lights can get close enough to trip the signals.
Currently, three signal lights on Sullivan give firetrucks the most trouble: over I-90, at Indiana and just north, at the Central Pre-Mix Concrete Products Co. parking lot.
“We haven’t really noticed it until the last three or four months,” Bold said.
In that time, the problem has become serious enough for the assistant fire chief to ask his Station 5 drivers to keep records of their response times when making trips around the industrial area and the new mall.
Station 5 is located on North Sullivan.
Bold believes traffic problems have caused response times to exceed set targets during afternoon rush hours. After drivers have logged a month of data, he’ll know for sure.
If his predictions prove accurate, Bold will take the information to county engineers and request they install new or additional system receptors along Sullivan. This would allow emergency vehicles to trip the lights from farther away.
“It wouldn’t be a very expensive fix,” Bold said.
County engineers say they have already ordered some of the new equipment.
Fire officials aren’t yet sure how much impact Spokane Valley Mall traffic will have on emergency vehicles.
When the Valley Wal-Mart opened in June, severe traffic blocked a medic truck on route to help a heart attack victim, adding about two to three minutes to the normal response time. The man died, and fire officials aren’t sure if those extra minutes could have helped save his life, but they want to do everything they can to prevent similar situations in the future.
Planned construction on I-90 over the next few years is expected to cause traffic delays, but the impact on the fire district will be minimal, Bold said. Emergency vehicles rarely use the freeway, unless they’re responding to an incident that took place there.
, DataTimes