Life-Threatening Traffic? Emergency Service Crews May Have Trouble Breaking Through Clogged Streets

Valley traffic is annoying, irritating - at times maddening.

It’s also a safety issue.

Will the fire truck sit stuck in traffic while your home burns? Will the ambulance arrive too late? Will the burglar get an extra five minutes for his getaway?

Maybe.

Valley fire, police and ambulance officials say increasingly heavy traffic has affected their response times. And while they’re trying to mitigate the impact, most aren’t optimistic about solutions.

“It goes beyond convenience,” said Capt. Dave Umthun, of the Spokane Valley Fire District. “We’ve had several serious calls where the response has been delayed,” he said. “And time is muscle tissue.”

Traffic, and the problems associated with it, has been growing steadily for the last decade, officials say. But it has jumped due to development in the last few years, and shot up with last month’s Spokane Valley Mall opening.

How bad is it?

Critical in some places.

“We can’t get out of the station,” said Capt. Umthun, who heads Fire Station 5 on North Sullivan Road.

During afternoons, paramedics and firefighters struggle to break through a bottleneck right outside their door. Rush hour traffic from the Spokane Industrial Park can bring emergency vehicles to a standstill.

It’s a serious problem, Umthun said, because the station’s medic truck is responsible for the whole region from Pines Road east to the Idaho state line. A medic truck from another station could be called upon, but that could double the response time, Umthun said.

Delays really intensified when new signal lights were installed at the Spokane Valley Mall entrance, Umthun said.

“Calls that would normally take us three or four minutes can take up to eight,” he said.

Police face the same challenges.

“It’s almost a nightmare,” said sheriff’s deputy Jack Rosenthal, who patrols the Valley.

Rosenthal simply avoids driving the Valley’s main traffic corridors - Sprague, Pines, Sullivan, Argonne - when responding to calls. With traffic getting “worse and worse and worse,” it’s now faster to take a roundabout or side route, he said.

In many cases, it’s also faster to turn off the lights and sirens, Rosenthal said. When traffic is bad, lights and sirens can become a safety hazard. Stuck drivers, who can’t move over safely, try to do so anyway. The result, he said, can be another accident.

Worsening traffic has led some patrol officers to neglect busy corridors, something Undersheriff Mike Aubrey said he’s trying to deal with. Deputies, he said, are afraid of getting stuck, and not being able to break away when needed.

“We get less done (and) we get to calls later than we’d like (because of traffic),” Aubrey said.

Officials with American Medical Response, the Valley’s main ambulance service, have decided to stick to the main arterials despite the frustration and delays.

It means ambulances are sometimes taking longer to get to patients, said Michael Lopez, AMR’s director of business development. But, he said, the hazards of uncontrolled intersections and children playing in residential streets has prevented AMR from allowing drivers to try neighborhood routes. At one time, AMR considered adding its ambulances to the county’s emergency vehicle pre-emption system, which allows fire and medic trucks to turn signal lights green and move the traffic ahead.

It decided not to join, Lopez said, because having two agencies on the same system could increase the risk of accidents, especially at intersections. For now, he said, the best AMR can do is keep its drivers informed of the bottlenecks.

Valley patrol officers, who must travel from the downtown Public Safety Building daily, sometimes find themselves stuck in I-90 bottlenecks, unable to relieve those on the previous shift.

One solution, Aubrey said, would be to build a justice center in the Valley, where roll calls and other tasks could be accomplished without the need to travel to and from downtown. Sheriff John Goldman supports the idea, he said, but hasn’t yet formally proposed it to the county.

Like proposed roadway improvements, Aubrey said, the idea offers no immediate help.

Fortunately, Fire Station 5 is about to get some relief. Engineers just installed equipment that will allow medic and pumper trucks to trip traffic lights on Sullivan before they even leave the station.

Currently, the system requires the vehicles to be on Sullivan before they can turn the lights green. When they can’t get out of the station’s driveway and onto the busy roadway, they’re out of luck.

Still, Umthun said, the improvements won’t solve the problem. He’s well aware that additional development is planned for the Sullivan area, and throughout the Valley. And more cars will come with it.

Patience - not easy in matters of life and death - may be the only answer for now, officials said.

“I don’t know that there’s any solution,” said Umthun. “And this is only the beginning.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo Graphic: Valley traffic on the rise