The new Automatic Aid Agreement between the Reno Fire Department and Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue is officially in effect as of Monday.
The agreement allows the closest unit to respond to a specific call regardless of jurisdiction.
Dave Cochran, Reno Fire Chief, explains how it works.
"For instance, a Reno station is closer to a county call, we will be going in addition to the county resource," he said. "And I say resource because it could be an ambulance, it could be an engine, vice versa, if a county station is closer, because some of them are literally within city limits, and they're going to be closer to some of those calls they're going to respond to those calls."
TMFR and RFD have had similar agreements like this in the past. They launched an automatic aid agreement specifically for fires in 2015, making this new agreement more of an expansion to any types of calls regardless of the nature of emergency.
And with our region continuing to grow, Chief Cochran says this agreement is extremely helpful for first responders and the community.
"The city of Reno is approaching 300,000 residents by itself," he said. "Our calls for service is growing for all the departments so this is important because we have that increase in demand for calls, so we'll have the resources committed to respond to make sure every call gets an appropriate response."
Chief Cochran says this agreement is already helping firefighters respond faster.
"There was a call up north outside of the Stead area in Lemmon Valley. That is county jurisdiction, so they're responding but our engine 9 which is located in Stead was actually closer, so we responded as well and we're actually first on scene," he said.
He tells us our region is also adopting a new CAD System, also known as Computer Aid Dispatch System.
"All the agencies in the region, all fire agencies, all police agencies, all medical response agencies will be on that system. And that will give us a tool to make this even better. We will have a more efficient response regardless of the nature of the call and regardless of the location so we can send the closest available resource."
