As of Wednesday, the Auora Fire Department is changing the way it responds to emergencies.
Fire Chief Alec Oughton told KDVR the tiered response model is a major shift from the traditional response of sending the closest units with lights and sirens.
“There are calls where minutes matter, and there are calls where minutes don’t impact the outcome. So what we’ve done with this change in our response model is really adjust our response to better match the risk that’s associated with the call that’s coming in,” he said.
The chief said there's already been a change as on the first day there was about a 20% decline in large fire apparatus responding to medical calls.
That leaves engines available to respond to fires.
“The first step is we need to figure out what the fire department does not need to respond to emergently. Freeing up some of these resources from the lower acuity calls may allow us to allocate more resources to the higher acuity calls.”
