By John Dobberstein, Editor
The city of Coweta will begin paying the city of Broken Arrow on a monthly basis for automatic emergency response support in unincorporated Wagoner County under a pilot plan approved by the Broken Arrow and Coweta city councils.
Because there is an exchange of money between municipalities the agreement must be sent to the state Attorney General’s office for approval. So there is one step to complete.
The two cities have jointly identified unincorporated areas that are served by each city’s respective fire department. Within the Coweta Fire Department’s response area there are various locations where a Broken Arrow Fire Department response unit may be closer than a Coweta response unit, and vice versa.
Fire departments in both cities have traditionally provided residents “the best response possible” utilizing existing available resources while also increasing the safety of all firefighters working on emergency scenes in the unincorporated areas, Moore says.
For life-threatening medical emergencies and all structure fires, each city had agreed to respond with the closest suppression unit, if available. But neither city was required to dispatch equipment or personnel to an incident that is more than 5 miles from its closest fire station.
Although Broken Arrow has fire stations close to the unincorporated areas in question, those residents are technically in the Coweta fire district.
Moore said an increasing number of Wagoner County residents who aren’t in either incorporated city have been dialing 911 for life-saving situations, medical emergencies and even fires, “and they were waiting a prolonged period of time for emergency services.”
Moore said residents have bought or built homes in the unincorporated areas that have a Broken Arrow mailing address and but they mistakenly assumed they would get city services.
Some residents have been lobbying city officials in Coweta and Broken Arrow for a solution. “Even if it’s not our legal obligation we feel like we have a moral obligation to try to take care of people,” Moore said.
Some residents have also expressed frustration about being dropped by insurance companies because of response times and distance from a fire station.
One of the residents pushing for change is Tonya Hamersley, who told the City Council her father passed away last year as they waited for emergency response from Coweta for more than 20 minutes. Hamersley and her brother were already doing CPR on him when help arrived but it was too late, she said.
Several weeks ago, Hamersley said, her grandson started going in and out of consciousness and she loaded him into a vehicle and drove him to the BAFD station on County Line Road rather than waiting for aid from Coweta.
When her family built a house two years ago off of 206th East Avenue near a brand new fire station — in the Broken Arrow school district — they didn’t realize they were not in Broken Arrow’s fire district.
“Waiting 20 minutes could be life or death for any of us and unfortunately we didn’t know when we built that we were in no man’s land,” Hamersley said. “If my grandson waited for Coweta who knows what could have happened.”
The agreement calls for the BAFD to provide “automatic aid in fire protection and first response and mutual aid in fire protection and first response.” Broken Arrow agrees to provide backfill capability to Coweta fire stations if its fire department’s resources are depleted for an extended duration due to one or more incidents.
The agreement also formalizes the current practice of BAFD and CFD providing converging response on incidents located on divided highways in each other’s jurisdictions.
Currently both Coweta and Broken Arrow maintain independent 911 communication centers and simultaneous dispatch is not currently possible. So officials said both Coweta and Broken Arrow will “strive to relay all pertinent information to the assisting agency’s communication center in a prompt and thorough manner.”
The BAFD says it’s unlikely the city of Coweta will have the resources to reciprocate services to Broken Arrow. So Coweta will pay Broken Arrow a flat rate of $2,500 per month for emergency response services rendered by the BAFD this year.
The agreement is not a merger of the fire departments, as they pact states both remain independent and pay their own expenses. Each municipality will also hold each other harmless from, “liability that may be incurred by reason of the reasonable conduct of each respective party’s equipment and personnel.”
The pilot project will last through the end of this year as both cities evaluate the demand of services and the benefit to both cities. After that, the cost will be reevaluated by the parties on an annual basis.
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