911 response time under fire

The house fire on Manning Street 2/5/07, the subject of a photo I posted here became major news because 1) it was the home of a city fireman and 2) it took 11 minutes for the first fire truck to arrive and 3) the last fire department to arrive - after 16 minutes from the time of the 911 call - was the volunteer department which held responsibility. All this brought a boat load of comments on the Advocate's web site and buried deeply within all that was a proposal posted Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:12 p.m., which reads, in part: "I suggest that all of the political leaders, particularly the Commisioners, explore creating a Licking County Fire Department. By combining revenues from throughout the entire county and matching (them) with the needs of the county, a better fire and EMS service could be created. ... By having several jurusdictional areas being protected by one department, you can eliminate some of the resources. Now, spread that over the entire county and, instead of run cards that contain different departments (each of which have to be toned out seperately), you now have the resources to be deployed for each type of incident, not unlike large, multistation fire departments. Also, a 'Fire Board' could be created to oversee the operations of the county fire department with represtatives from the various communities, the fire service and laypersons from the county. The stations could be staffed with paid people and supplemented with part-timer and volunteers. Now you have the closest 'station' rather than the 'department' responding..." Read the whole thing at this link.