Courtesy-CFD
COLUMBUS, Ind. –The City of Columbus Fire Department (CFD) and the Columbus Township Fire Department are collaborating on an automatic aid agreement between agencies. The agreement stipulates that both agencies will respond to fire incidents within both the city and Columbus Township boundaries.
Mutual aid agreements between Bartholomew County fire agencies and CFD have long been established for incidents that require additional manpower and specialized operational resources. For mutual aid requests, the agency requesting aid must request that a specific agency receive a dispatch through the Bartholomew County Emergency Operations Center.
Through automatic aid, the partnering agencies with be dispatched simultaneously during the initial incident dispatch. Through the automatic aid agreement, automatic aid is provided at no cost to the partnering agencies, per CFD’s Lt. Mike Wilson.
If approved, the automatic aid agreement will be in effect twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for a period of one year. The Columbus Township Fire Department is currently staffed twenty-four hours a day by full-time firefighters. CFD and the Columbus Township Fire Department are currently the only fire agencies within Bartholomew County with twenty-four-hour staffing.
Pending approval by the Columbus Township Board and the City of Columbus Board of Public Works and Safety, the Columbus Township Fire Department and the CFD will establish agreed-upon standard operating procedures and implement a dual agency training program.
