Farmington City Council is considering building a new fire station on San Juan Boulevard after being informed a station in the location would increase firefighter turnout times, which are currently longer than the industry standard.
The Animas River Station – an $8 million facility – has been proposed for 2300 San Juan Boulevard. The project will be presented to the State of New Mexico in July for potential state funding and grant opportunities.
Farmington Fire arrives within four minutes of a call 77% of the time with its current configuration of fire stations, Dave Silvinski, a managing partner with Advanced Selections, told councilors at a Tuesday work session where he recommended the city build the new fire station.
“Our project was focused on finding the best location for the next fire department or departments in the city and how quickly they were responding to incidents,” Silvinski said, adding his firm looked at the record management system and plotted the number of incidents and response times from 2020-2024.
The national standard for fire department travel time is four minutes, according to Silvinski, who said that is because “brain death starts to occur after four minutes without oxygen – that’s a very critical benchmark for us.”
Fire also grows exponentially every minute, he said, and the sooner firefighters respond, the faster hey can stop a blaze from spreading.
Farmington Fire is busy.
“As of this morning, we’re at 7,209 calls,” Farmington Fire Chief Robert Sterret said. “A lot of our calls are multi-unit response calls. Right now, we’re at 12,476 responses, which is significantly higher than call volume.”
The majority of these calls are between 1 p.m. and 4 a.m., and the frequency of calls at odd hours can have an impact on firefighters.
“Engine 5, a couple of months ago, they ran from 2 in the afternoon to 4 in the morning every two hours. That wears on you,” Sterret said.
The proposed new Animas River Station at 2300 San Juan Boulevard, near the intersection of Tucker, would house 12 additional firefighters and a new engine. It would provide protection for the Animas and Berg Parks as well as for residential areas on southeastern side of the city.
By adding this new fire department, Farmington Fire would respond to 90% of its calls within that four-minute window, according to Silvinski.
City Manager Shana Reeves pointed out that the city council “strategically earmarked and purchased” the San Juan Boulevard property, which will allow the department to be “proactive and realize some ways we can optimize our response time here in town.”
Councilor Linda Rodgers wanted to know what types of calls the department would be responding to when the new station is built and operational.
“Traffic still are a smaller percentage of calls, but they’re more severe,” Sterret said, adding this southeastern part of the city has a low-income base “and you have demographics that play in the role and density of call volume, which highlights those challenges.”
There are older mobile homes in the area that could be deteriorating and there also is an aging population with a good number of medical calls and how well they take care of themselves can factor into the call as well, he said.
Having the new station would alleviate some of the stress on pulling from other stations to respond, which would essentially lower response times.
The study also found there are a number of reasons for response times being over four minutes in Farmington. Those include traffic, dispatch, fatigue and turnout times for firefighters.
“The turnout time is how fast it takes the firefighters once they’re notified by the tones. They have standards they need to meet: get dressed, get into their vehicle and drive,” Silvinski said. “We have found Farmington was a little slow – some of those challenges were outside their control and some were within their control.”
The industry standard for turnout times is one minute and Farmington firefighters were coming in at 3 ½ minutes, Silvinski explained, adding that Sterret has addressed those things within his control.
Since the study, “turnout times are down to 2 ½ minutes,” Sterret said, but there are other factors such traffic and dispatch making it difficult to meet lower response times.
“Dispatch is one factor,” Sterret said. “We’ve been discussing automated dispatch.”
Traffic is another.
“There’s a lot of traffic issues,” Silvinski said. “We’re using real traffic data to look at controlling intersections” with preemption systems.
The study also showed that adding an eighth fire station would increase the four-minute response times to 93%, according to Silvinski.
At this time, the city is focused on the new station on San Juan Boulevard, which is listed as number 5 on the city of Farmington’s Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan for FY 2028.
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