The city’s public safety committee continued it’s discussion during their July 17 meeting, hearing from Great Falls Fire Rescue.

The committee was established by the City Commission earlier this year after the voters denied a multi-million public safety levy and bond.

They’ve been meeting twice a month since May to learn about the city’s public safety operations, needs and potentially make recommendations as to whether the city should pursue another levy.

Tom Zaremski, deputy fire marshal, told the committee that fire prevention is important to protect life and property and enforcement of the fire code plays into that.

An example, he told the committee, was when deputy fire marshals found that a local grain elevator had turned off their fire suppression system for maintenance, but forgot to turn it back on, and they were able to correct that, preventing potential damage should a fire have occured.

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The fire prevention bureau also handles fire investigations, which are conducted for any fire within the city limits for origin and cause.

Zaremski said those investigations also help point them to areas where more public education may be needed.

Many product recalls have come through fire investigations, he said.

The fire prevention bureau also works with the city planning office to review new construction, renovations and other construction projects to ensure compliance with fire code.

“The codes are in-depth,” he said, and can require time and research for plan review that “helps us in progressing and growing Great Falls.”

Many of the challenges at GFFR, he said, come down to a lack of personnel.

GFFR has relied on engine crews to help with public education, such as the annual skits in elementary schools for fire prevention month.

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GFFR hasn’t been able to do those skits since COVID, he said, leaving a gap in public education that might take time to show up if those children don’t learn fire safety young and help teach their siblings and families.

He said they’d also like to get into the university dorms to do fire prevention education for those students, many of whom are living on their own for the first time.

Engine crews also have to stay on scene during fire investigations, which are more time consuming if they’re deemed criminal and firefighters have to call in the Great Falls Police Department, which is also undermanned, Zaremski said.

“It’s just manpower spread thin,” he said.

The fire prevention bureau relies on the operations side to help with plan review and firefighters will also look at buildings to see how they’d fight a fire under those conditions, which helps upfront and also familiarizes firefighters with buildings in the event of fire, he said.

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The need for more personnel and resources has been an ask for his entire career, spanning about two decades, he said.

“It’s going to come to a breaking point,” Zaremski told the committee.

He said that they’re getting the job done with the resources they have, but “with more personnel, it’s what we can be doing better.”

Zaremski said that every call he’s been on, whether it was a fire or medical, the people involved had been grateful for GFFR’s response.

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He said he worried about their diminishing ability to respond to all calls within a short time due to lack of resources and the city’s footprint expanding. He worried that they might not get to some people in time.

“I don’t want them to get to that point, but you have to invest in that to ensure that outcome,” he said.

Aaron Weissman, committee member and Teriyaki Madness owner, asked if code changes were making construction safer.

Zaremski said in general, yes, but they’re minimum requirements.

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He said that there’s always an expense with meeting code, but they’re usually derived from some event that had a loss of life or property.

Zaremski said the prevention bureau will likely struggle with its existing workforce as the city continues to grow.

GFFR asked for $5,283,560 in the levy, which included:

• 32 new firefighters: $3,221,837
• one new deputy chief of fire prevention: $141,950
• initial equipment for 32 new firefighters: $403,200
• additional annual occupational physicals: $93,000
• additional uniforms and uniform allowance: $149,369
• additional safety equipment: $100,762
• additional building maintenance: $125,000
• apparatus equipment revolving schedule: $941,782
• pay adjustments for new station promotions (engineers, captain, paramedic in charge): $106,661

GFFR also requested $14,358,000 in a bond for a fifth fire station and to establish an equipment revolving schedule.

Capt. Brandon Jaraczeski said that on GFFR’s operational side, meaning the crews that respond to fire and medical calls, they aren’t making it to incidents within the time standards to nearly half the city’s land area.

For firefighters to enter a structure, they have to wait for a second crew for their own safety, and fire grows quickly, so structures have the potential to go up quick if GFFR can’t get their quickly.

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It’s an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule that requires two firefighters outside for two firefighters to go inside, GFFR Chief Jeremy Jones said.

Two do that, they need two engines on scene, since each engine carries three firefighters and the driver’s stay with the truck.

Jaraczeski said they’re making do with what they have, but it’s “the bare minimum. We’re running on the razor’s edge.”

For structure fires, GFFR sends out 13 firefighters, which is everyone on shift, leaving no one to cover the rest of the city.

In that case, GFFR will call in off-duty firefighters, but that can take 30-45 minutes.

If another house catches fire while they’re responding to one full structure fire, they won’t be able to respond, Jaraczeski said.

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“We’re on the razor’s edge all the time, it gets hairy,” he said. “I don’t think the city knows how underprotected they really are some of the time. We can make a difference, if we can get there.”

It’s like insurance, he said, you don’t know what you have until you need it.

For medical calls, having responders on scene in under six minutes can make the difference between life and death.

GFFR already stopped responding to minor medical calls due to their increasing call volume.

Jaraczeski said the question is what the community thinks is an acceptable response time when they call 911.

“Our minimum ask was what we asked for,” he said of GFFR’s levy ask, which would have caught them up to current needs, but they also have to look ahead to be prepared.

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The slowing response times will cause local property insurance rates to rise, he said.

Sandra Guynn, committee member, said she was at a July 4 when a fellow attendee was annoyed that they saw a fire engine responding to a medical call after an ambulance had arrived. She told the group that someone at the gathering had said GFFR wasn’t qualified to go to medical calls.

GFFR staffs a paramedic on all engines for all shifts, a staffing level that took years for GFFR to return to and a partnership with Great Falls College MSU to train paramedics.

There are times when the Great Falls Emergency Services ambulances are only staffed to Basic Life Support, meaning there’s no paramedic on those ambulances.

Jaraczeski said that is an issue of community education.

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He’s a paramedic and they’re able to do more tasks that could save someone’s life that emergency medical technicians, or EMTs, can’t do.

Asked if the city was interfering with private business by operating two ambulances, GFFR Chief Jeremy Jones explained to the committee how the city’s emergency medical response system works.

Under city code, GFFR is responsible for the EMS system within the city limits. The city has a performance contract with GFES for ambulance transport services, but that’s subject to city standards and requirements.

“We do it well and other cities look to us to modify how they’re doing it,” Jones said.

All Great Falls firefighters are at least EMTs and some have advanced training as paramedics and GFFR staffs a paramedic on all engines operating in the city.

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Fire engines do respond to medical calls since it’s staffed and they have tools on the engine, but most importantly, so they’re ready for the next call, whether it be medical or fire, rather than taking out a different vehicle, having to return to the station and then respond to the call, taking time that could save someone’s life or property, Jones said.

“Until it personally affects you, people just aren’t getting that message,” he said.

Weissman asked Jones why the city has ambulances.

The city has two ambulances and Jones said “it boiled down to we need the work to get done.”

The city contracts with GFES and requires minimum staffing, but when there’s surge events, meaning more calls than available resources, there sometimes isn’t an available GFES ambulance.

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In that instance, GFFR will send one or both of their ambulances to transport a patient, resetting the system so GFES ambulances can complete their calls and get back in service.

GFFR doesn’t have a dedicated ambulance company and they cross-staff out of the fire stations.

Jones said GFFR was essentially forced into having the capacity to transport patients to mitigate any incident.

GFES also provides private transport services outside of the city’s EMS system and Benefis Health System has its own ambulance, primarily used for moving patients from the helipad or fixed wing locations, he said. That’s also outside the city’s EMS dispatch system.

Jones told the committee that his top three concerns are that they don’t have the needed personnel, don’t have fire station coverage or the training center to train firefighters at the level they need to be.

“We risk manage everyday,” he said. “I think we have a very frugal city, but we are at the point of stretched to thin and we’re going to have a catastrophic failure.”

Jones said it’s a question for the commission to decide if they want to reduce the public safety asks.

He said the public safety departments were tasked with a question of what they needed to get caught up to 10 years ago, and that’s what they provided as their levy asks.

The committee next meets Aug. 7.