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Westfield fire chief urges new stations, four‑person staffing to improve response times
Summary
Fire Chief Rob Gaylor presented an independent response-coverage study showing current 4-minute road coverage at about 34.2% and recommended two near-term stations plus a third site to raise coverage into the 50–70% range; council and mayor discussed costs, staffing and mobile integrated health efforts to reduce nonemergency calls.
Rob Gaylor, chief of the Westfield Fire Department, told the City Council on the evening of the meeting that an outside study shows measurable coverage gaps and recommended new stations and staffing to meet national standards. “With our current stations and staffing, we meet that 4 minute objective 34.2% of the time,” Gaylor said, and added that bringing Station 84 and Station 85 online would increase that to about 51%.
The study identified three candidate areas for new stations, roughly labeled A, B and C in the department’s maps. Gaylor said adding all three candidate sites would raise the department’s 4‑minute road coverage to about 70.8%; he gave per‑site estimates of roughly 60.7% for A, 60.3% for B and 54.3% for C. He said the study used a 2024 baseline and did not incorporate projects the council has already approved.
Why it matters: the council heard that faster response times and additional on‑scene advanced life support can materially improve outcomes.…
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