Increased Fire Response Times Put Safety At Risk

BOSTON -- When it comes to a fire or a medical emergency, every second counts.

 Yet budget cuts, layoffs and failed overrides are putting many cities and towns in a pressure cooker, trying to keep the public safe with fewer resources. Team 5 Investigates found that's leading to rising response times, putting safety at risk.

 In Shirley, Mass., on Dec. 6, 2009, a series of frightening 911 calls came into dispatch from neighbors about a house fire.

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 Another call came from a woman inside the fully engulfed home.

 "My apartment's on fire. Now, now, we need you here!"

 It was a baby sitter telling the fire department that the woman she worked for, 46-year-old Patricia LeBlanc, was trapped inside.

 Firefighter Capt. Joe Hawthorne lived just down the street.

 "My pager went off around 2 a.m. ," said Hawthorne. "When I heard the address I knew it was just around the corner from my house."

 The nearby fire station was closed. Hawthorne left his house and ran into the burning home without gear or backup.

 LeBlanc's three young children and the baby sitter made it out safely, but not LeBlanc.

 "I could hear her screaming inside the room, and the noise kind of led me in the right direction," said Hawthorne.

 "I found her on the floor about 4 or 5 feet in. I grabbed her, dragged her back to the door, and we both sort of went down the stairs backward," he said.

 The National Fire Protection Association says staffed firehouses should respond within five minutes. In Shirley, it took much longer than that.

 "It was 11 minutes for the first fire apparatus to get there," said Shirley Fire Chief Dennis Levesque.

 The house, which was destroyed, sits less than a mile from the closed fire station. While waiting for an ambulance, Hawthorne and the police covered LeBlanc's burns with snow.

 Leblanc's sister Nancy Healy is now raising LeBlanc's three young girls while their mother remains hospitalized.

 "She was quite badly burned, 65 to 70 percent," said Healy, "Her face, her body, her hands, her back."

 "You don't want to see anybody perish or die," said Levesque, "You want to be able to come out of a scene knowing that you've done everything that you possibly can." Levesque said he can no longer say his department could do that.

 Abington's fire chief has similar worries after a tight budget forced a station closure there.

 "What used to be a four-minute response is now going to be an eight-minute response," said Abington Fire Chief Arthur Pelland.

 A fire can double in size in less than a minute and medical emergencies can escalate in that time.

 "I think we're one phone call way from catastrophe," said Pelland.

 Team 5 Investigates obtained statewide statistics from the fire marshal.

 Half of cities and towns had an increase in response times from 2005 to 2008. Half exceeded the recommended five minutes for a fire truck to arrive.

 In Foxboro, response times went from three minutes to nearly seven, in Boxboro, more than six minutes to nearly eleven.

 Milford went from 3 1/2 minutes to over six minutes. And in Shirley, where Patricia LeBlanc almost died from her burns, response time increased from three minutes to over seven minutes.

 Healy said what happened that night haunts her. She wondered whether more could have been done for her sister.

 When Team 5's Kelley Tuthill told her the people of Shirley approved overrides three times to keep their trash collection, but wouldn't approve an override to make sure there was a firefighter on duty at all times, she was outraged.

 "No one ever knows when tragedy is going to strike your doorstep. Having at least someone staffing the fire, as opposed to collecting your trash, I think life is much more important than a bag of garbage," Healy said.