By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

A trial program for limited automatic mutual aid between the Ellis County Fire Department (ECFD) and the Hays Fire Department (HFD) is being considered.

According to a memo from Hays Fire Chief Gary Brown to Hays city commissioners, the “existing mutual aid program is helpful but does not allow for the most effective operations.”

In the automatic aid program, ECFD will respond with one fire truck and crew into the city on the first alarm for all reported building fires. HFD will automatically send one fire truck and crew into a limited area surrounding Hays for reported building fires. Brown called it “the area with the most complex and urban fire problems for county fire department.”

Brown estimated ECFD will respond to assist the HFD about 70 times a year while HFD will respond outside the city limits about five times a year.

There will be some budget considerations, according to Assistant Hays City Manager Jacob Wood, particularly for Ellis County. That’s why a trial program will be tried first starting in January.

“Our city firefighters are here (at the fire station) all the time anyway, so an additional call to something outside the city isn’t going to make any huge impact on us,” Wood pointed out. “The county firefighters are volunteers and get paid on a by-case basis and per training hour. If there are more calls in the city they’re responding to that they wouldn’t typically, there would be some (financial) impact there.

“How much that is, is hard to say.”

The benefits, Wood said, would be more firefighters responding to certain building fires and more mutual training of the city and county fire departments.

The proposal will be discussed at Thursday’s Hays City Commission work session.

Other agenda items include sandblasting and painting of the east primary clarifier at the water treatment plant and a update of the 2016 Uniform Pubic Offense Code/2016 Standard Traffic Ordinance.

The complete agenda can be seen here.