Four Seasons looks to firefighting future

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Graham Federico of the Lake of the Four Seasons Fire Department. | Photo Provided~Sun-Times Media

WINFIELD — The Town of Winfield sent a notice that on Jan. 31 that it would hold a meeting with the Lakes of the Four Seasons Fire Department board and the Winfield Township trustee. That was not the case. Officials instead said the meeting was private, despite the fact that three members of the council, constituting a quorum, were in attendance. Council members Paulette Skinner, Donald Samburg and James Simmons were there.

Skinner called the meeting, or “gathering,” together informally. Four Seasons chief Graham Federico led the meeting, starting with showing a video from a three-alarm townhouse fire in Ballymeade, just outside of Wilmington, Del. It happened around 2:30 in the afternoon of Dec. 19, 2011. It is served by a volunteer fire department about the same size as the LOFS district.

In the video, residents were standing around the fire scene, screaming, “Where is the Fire Department? The place is burning.” Those volunteers took about 8 minutes to get to the scene. Then all they could do was try to keep the fire from spreading to all the units. The fire destroyed one townhouse and caused heavy smoke and water damage to several others.

The reason the chief showed the video is because of the similarity to what happened in the townhouse fire in four seasons a few years ago. When asked how this compared to the LOFS townhouses, FF/EMT Jon Buczek said, “The firebreaks that were in the attic (here) were cut. The cable TV installers had cut 3-foot by 3-foot holes to climb through.”

It made installation easier. It also gave the fire a great place to run. Captain Kevin La Duke said, “I was on the first engine there and there were no (human) fatalities. We lost some pets.”

According to Federico the average response time for LOFS Fire Force is 9 minutes. They have to wait for a minimum of four volunteers to arrive at the station and gear up before they can even pull the first fire engine out onto the street.

There was a fire the day before the meeting at the barbershop at the corner of 109th and Miami around 1:30 a.m. Monday morning. The LOFS ambulance was there within four minutes. The ambulance is staffed at the station.

It took the volunteers eight minutes to get the first engine at the scene. Other fire departments answering the mutual aid alarm came from Boone Grove, Crown Point and Hebron.

“We always hope we have fires or bad car accidents happen at night or on weekends because we are at home,” said Federico. During the daytime it could have taken longer to get volunteers to the station.

He also informed everyone there, that any time a structure fire has 25 percent involvement it is too dangerous to allow any firefighters to enter the building. At that point the job is to keep the fire from spreading to the surrounding buildings.

He then explained that the 1994 engine and the 1991 Quint (stick ladder truck) should both be retired. They no longer meet code, the chief said.

He presented two of possible three options to bring the department up to state standards.

The first two do not immediately require the formation of a fire territory. The third option will show what it will take to form an LOFS Fire Territory and will be presented at another informal meeting, on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. Those figures were not available yet.

The problem with the first two solutions is that because both the town and township are in Lake County their levy is frozen. They cannot raise taxes. They do not have the money; only a territory would be able to raise the taxes to increase the department’s budget.

Option 1 has the town increasing the 2012 contract to $150,000, purchasing a new ambulance on their own at a cost of $130,000 after making their last payment on the jointly purchased ambulance of $19,000, and share the cost of buying a new fire engine, which would be a demo unit at just $400,000 with equipment.

The town, the township and the West Porter Township Fire District would equally share the payments. That would be zero down payment and payments of $22,500 per year for the next seven years for each entity.

That is a one-year plan while working on setting up an LOFS Fire Territory.

Option 2 was a five-year plan that would have each of the three bodies increase its contract amount every year through 2016, but not at as much of a jump. It would include the purchase of a new ambulance and engine as in option 1, but also in 2015 they have to add payments for a new Quint, or ladder truck. In 2013 an increase would be required for the start of full-time payroll.

Eventually what is required will be staffing 22 full-time positions, the chief said: one full-time chief, one full-time administrative assist, two part-time chiefs for emergency medical services, training, inspections and other duties, six firefighters per shift consisting of one captain, one engineer, two paramedics and two EMTs. That way, according to Federico, the captain, engineer and one each of the paramedics and EMTs would be able to go out with the engine.

Winfield Township Trustee Rollie Brauer, Jr. said about Option 1 and 2, “In Lake County we are frozen. We can’t do it.” He added, “The service we are getting in our areas had decreased.”

Skinner wanted to know who owns the south station, and who pays for that station south of Lakes of the Four Seasons. La Duke told her that the volunteers took out a loan in 2005. It is owned by the LOFS Fire Force Volunteers.

It was further explained that the township and the volunteers took on the expense of getting the paper work and study done about the territory because the town wouldn’t participate. Forming a territory would remove the expense and income for fire services from the current taxing bodies, and go to a new taxing body. The talks continue.