For large services, the solution is to always be the donor and hardly the recipient of automatic assistance, to agree in advance that there will be no more than two units that will respond to automatic assistance in the event of an incident in a neighbouring municipality, which will keep a sufficient number of your stations in service to cover your own jurisdiction. Maintaining a reasonable number of personnel and equipment to deal with most other emergencies generally avoids the negative effects on your own response time to citizen services in their own jurisdiction. What could be the flip side of life with these great benefits of being part of an automatic help system? Realistically, if your department has more staff, appliances or specialized training than your neighbors, the main advantage is that you get an extra firefighter on site faster to quickly reach the NFPA safety level for a building fire. This can be an essential benefit and is worth the time your department contributes to the assets of your neighbouring communities. Every other day, one service would occupy an engine, while the other a health unit would occupy. Both units would respond to fires, EMS calls and other emergencies within one of the two responsibilities to provide an adequate first crew. For example, the services in the surrounding area could count on their joint response with at least one unit of these two legal orders for automatic assistance purposes. But realistically, if you enter into an automatic aid agreement, it is best to see who will be the dominant donor and who will be the multi-year beneficiary. It is better to go with your eyes open in an automatic help agreement than to be disappointed or disappointing for the other participants. Again, the order of arrival on site should automatically be the key to the assignment of the incoming aircraft and its personnel.
When a department shares such units through automatic assistance, it is not only a matter of avoiding dual equipment of participating services, but also of sharing an advantage among specially trained staff. For example, a regular business can send an antenna to a nearby municipality for a structural fire, while the neighbouring municipality can send you a boat and a dive team for a water rescue. Classification ratings are class 1 to 10, with 1 being the highest score. Class 10 Class 10 is considered „unprotected“ either because of the absence of a firefighter covering the field or because of the excessive distance from a fire station. Elk Creek Fire Protection District is classified as a Class 5 in areas within an 8 km radius of a fire station. In 2016, the Elk Creek Fire Protection District entered into an automatic assistance agreement with nearby firefighters. This made all the objects within 8 miles of each fire station, including the fire station next door to a public protection class 5. See the list of neighbouring districts. Accommodations located more than 8 km from each fire station are assessed with Class 10. The dichotomy for the boss, who provides mutual assistance/automatic assistance, is that without their services, someone in a nearby community may die in a fire or medical emergency aggravated by a delay in emergency measures. There will always be some one-sided aspects of automatic help, or perhaps even a growing sense that others are exploiting your department`s capabilities.