Four-minute emergency response time enforced in West Jordan
Dec 04, 2019 11:06AM ● By Erin Dixon
(Wikimedia Commons)
By Erin Dixon | [email protected]
All new developments in West Jordan must be within four minutes access to the nearest fire station.
The standard is not new, but in October, when Bella Estates sought to expand their residential development, they were required to add another access road.
“One of the requirements that I made for the proposed subdivision is that they are required to make an access point onto 5490 West,” Fire Marshal Paul Brockbank said. “[T]he proposed subdivision lies outside of our four-minute response time because we have to come into it through the existing subdivision to the south and east.”
The four-minute limit is a national standard.
“Those times were tied to NFPA1710, which was a standard that was put out by the fire service for response times,” Chief Derek Maxfield said. “They weren’t willy-nilly numbers they came up with 10 years ago. In any kind of emergency, the faster you can get there, the better.”
A single minute can mean the difference between a small or large fire emergency.
“The rule of thumb is that fire doubles in size every minute,” Maxfield said. “Now with some of the synthetic materials that we’re using in construction, it can go even faster than that.”
However, some of the city may be just outside that four-minute standard if it was built prior to 10 years ago.
“It’s not something that is retroactive, and we have to go back and fix roads,” Maxfield said.
