Last year in March, we covered the formation of the West Suburban Fire/Rescue Alliance, which was created to enhance cooperation among firefighting agencies in DuPage County while aiming to cut costs. Recently, the Daily Herald caught up with Carol Stream Fire Chief Rick Kolomay to discuss how the program has evolved over the past year.
Since its launch, the alliance has seen significant progress in improving emergency response times and resource sharing. The alliance, which comprises the Wheaton Fire Department along with the fire protection districts of Carol Stream, Winfield, and West Chicago, isn't about merging departments but fostering collaboration. They've implemented standardized protocols for firefighters and conduct joint training sessions every month. Currently, they're evaluating ambulance fee structures across participating communities.
According to officials, even though the data is relatively recent, figures from DU-COMM, the regional service handling 911 calls for these municipalities, suggest emergency response times have dropped significantly since the alliance began. For general alarm situations involving multiple units—three engines, three trucks, two ambulances, and five command officers—response times to structure fires have decreased on average by nearly five minutes.
This improvement is largely credited to DU-COMM's refinement of their computer-aided dispatch system and the introduction of a new procedure within the alliance known as "closest station response." Prior to the alliance, outdated policies limited the availability of critical equipment, forcing departments to ration resources and delay full deployment.
"Previously," explained Carol Stream Chief and alliance President Rick Kolomay, "we would hold back some of our resources, only sending one of each type of vehicle because we needed to cover the rest of our area. This meant we weren’t always able to get all the necessary resources to the scene promptly because we had to skip over neighboring towns to find available units."
Today, the alliance ensures that when a major incident occurs, a chief or deputy chief, along with a fire engine, ladder truck, and ambulance, moves to the affected community’s main station to coordinate further actions if needed. Kolomay mentioned that the alliance is still analyzing emergency call patterns in each town and remains open to the idea of having the nearest station respond universally in the future.
For more details on this story, you can read the full article [here](#). Thanks to Chris for bringing this to our attention!
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