A fire station location study completed in 2021 recommended placing a fire station near Rural and Baseline roads, with a second station planned farther east at a future location.
This approach allows Tempe Fire Medical Rescue to better position firefighters and paramedics as the city continues to grow and change, helping crews reach emergencies more quickly.
Station location study summary
Prepared by ORH in 2021, the station location study helps Tempe forecast emergency services needs through 2040. An executive summary of that study concluded:
i. In 2015 ORH undertook a Fire Station Location Study to assess response and workload for Tempe Fire Medical Rescue (TFMR), which made recommendations for future station locations to 2025. Subsequent modelling in 2019 determined the optimal location within the Novus Innovation Corridor for the proposed Station 8.
ii. As the City of Tempe (the City) continues to grow and evolve, there is the need to enhance the study with an up-to-date and informed view on the future requirements for TFMR. By capturing this new information, the aim is to tie TFMR’s station location plans to the City’s 2040 plan.
iii. The overall objective is to provide TFMR with suitable evidence to deliver station locations that will optimize emergency response over the next two decades, taking account of recent trends in incident response, future projections for incidents and the current facilities available to TFMR.
iv. ORH analyzed six years (01/01/2014 to 12/31/2019) of incident and response data to build a quantitative understanding of TFMR operations.
v. Total incident demand increased each year from 20,921 in 2014 to 24,457 in 2018, an average increase of 4.0% per year. Between 2018 and 2019 demand remained relatively unchanged. Growth has generally been in line with that forecast in the 2015 Fire Station Location Study.
vi. TFMR is a net receiver in terms of automatic aid responses into and out of the City, with the number of responses into Tempe from neighboring departments increasing significantly over the six-year period, particularly from Guadalupe. Scottsdale is the only department that received substantially more responses from TFMR than it provided into Tempe.
vii. As with most US fire departments, TFMR’s crew response performance is outside the very stringent NFPA standards for 90th percentiles. Response times to BLS and Fire incidents have increased significantly since 2018 due to crews more frequently responding as Code 2 (not using lights and sirens).
viii. ORH undertook a detailed projection of future incident volumes across the City based on population forecasts produced by Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG).
ix. The annual number of incidents is projected to increase by 30% over the next 20 years, to reach 41,297 by 2040, with the largest increases expected in the north-east of the City.
x. With no changes to station locations or crewing, response times would deteriorate by 2025 due to units being busier and therefore less available to respond.
xi. The planned opening of Station 8 in 2028 would mitigate the response time degradation resulting from demand growth. However, with no further changes, response times across Tempe will continue to lengthen through to 2040.
xii. Modeling identified an optimal ten-station configuration to minimize response times when phased in between 2025 and 2040:
• Stage A – Relocate Station 3
• Stage B – Add new Station 9 in east Tempe and relocate Station 4
• Stage C – Add new Station 10 in north-west Tempe
xiii. The proposed phasing option would deliver City-wide response time improvements of almost one minute at the 90th percentile, while also providing more resilience in the west of the City if Guadalupe were not an automatic aid participant.