City of Rolling Meadows
Grant: $1,157,000 - Federal Emergency Management Agency - Sep. 25, 2009
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Award Description: The Rolling Meadows Fire Department will utilize this award for the construction of an additional firehouse to improve response times and enhance the safety of our firefighters and the community. This project will reduce response times to a heavily populated ever-expanding area of the city. By constructing this station our city-wide response will be closer to compliance with both the National Fire Protection Association?s 1710 response standard and Insurance Services Organization?s station distribution guidelines. This project is also in keeping with the RMFD?s long-range strategic plan to provide mission critical infrastructure and capital improvements to meet the current and future response needs of the community. Constructing this station will allow the RMFD to redeploy current staffing out of three locations. Each location will be staffed 24 hours to assure equal coverage is provided to the community around the clock. This new station will allow us to deploy the proper amount of staffing and equipment across all geographic regions of the city based on the demographics of our call volume and other relevant response data. This overall philosophy of operations is consistent with the RMFD?s goal to provide a network of strategically located stations enabling us to deliver the most efficient and effective fire and emergency service response city-wide. This station is a key piece in providing a consistent level of service in an area of the city that has historically not realized the benefits of an adequate and timely emergency response. Currently, fire and emergency responses into this area far exceed those recommended by NFPA standards. Only 21% of the responses into this area meet the 4 minute or less initial response time threshold. Even more concerning is that 25% of the total repsonses into this area exceed a 6 minute response time threshold. Clearly, since the RMFD is not able to meet an acceptable response time objective in this area, the construction of this station would have an immediate and profound impact on improving response times into this area. Coupling the delayed response times with the set-up time needed to start initial on scene fire operations one can easily conclude that our firefighters are often entering structures at the most dangerous time period, which is the preflashover or flashover period. In terms of a risk benefit analysis, improving response times will directly improve firefighter safety and decrease the potential risk to our personnel. Further, ensuring a more rapid fire response will have an added cost benefit to the community in terms of reduced fire loss, increased financial stability and a positive impact of the quality of life. Setting aside the safety, financial and quality of life aspects of this project it should be mentioned that there is yet another benefit to the community in constructing this project. The department is committed to using the latest design technology to assure that this building is environmentally friendly and will incorporate the design features that maximize green technology to make the facility not only community friendly, but also reduce the short and long-term costs of running the facility. It is our mission to design a building that would meet the requirements of a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified building. Design features that speak directly to an eco-friendly building would include, a green roof, geo-thermo heating system, the use of natural lighting, recycled building materials, and native plantings are all design characteristics that will be incorporated into the building.
Project Description: There is no activity reported for this quarter.
Jobs Summary: No jobs were created for this quarter. This grant was awarded on 09/25/09. (Total jobs reported: 0)
Project Status: Not Started
This award's data was last updated on Sep. 25, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.
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