After a 7-year delay, San Diego has a roving fire engine for one tough-to-reach area — and more may come soon

San Diego is taking a long-awaited step toward shrinking emergency response times in hard-to-reach areas of the city and neighborhoods with high call volumes.

The city launched its first roving "peak-hour” fire engine five months ago in downtown's East Village neighborhood — one of a dozen coverage gap areas where badly-needed new fire stations won't be built for years.

The East Village peak-hour engine could be the first of many, with City Heights, Barrio Logan, Liberty Station and southeastern San Diego near Ocean View Boulevard among the most likely candidates.

The peak-hour engines are considered a cheaper and faster way to extend the city's emergency-response coverage without building new fire stations, which require finding land and securing money for construction.

While the East Village peak-hour engine is assigned to a particular geographic area, such engines could also be unconnected to any station and simply deployed across the city each day at busy times in busy areas.

City officials have been committed to the idea of roving engines as a solution to coverage gaps since a consultant recommended them in 2017. But deployment was delayed by staffing shortages.

"It's been on our radar for quite some time, but lack of staffing has prevented us from pulling the trigger," Fire Chief Colin Stowell said last week. "It didn't make any sense to further our staffing challenges by adding a peak-hour engine when we were struggling just to fill the stations every day with firefighters."

Large fire academies and more successful recruiting strategies in recent years helped solve the staffing shortage, so the city decided to spend $1.1 million to try a roving engine in East Village for one year as a pilot program.

The engine, known as Engine 80, operates from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. out of the same station as Engine 4 on the border of the East Village and Gaslamp Quarter on Eighth Avenue near J Street.

Stowell said it's been a remarkable success so far, reducing the unusually high volume of calls Engine 4 had been handling and shrinking response times in the area.

Population growth in the East Village, including from many new high-rise buildings, had increased call volume for Engine 4 to an average of 22 calls per day, with 26 to 28 on many days.

"It was just not sustainable," said Stowell, noting that some firefighters working on Engine 4 had been struggling with their physical or mental health.

Now the two engine companies take about eight calls each between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and Engine 4 averages eight more calls between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m.

"It's certainly made their daytime better and prepared them for the night," he said of Engine 4.

The average response time in the area has dropped nearly half a minute, with Engine 80 averaging responses at 3 minutes and 39 seconds — the fastest in the city.

Stowell said that's partly because the East Village is so compact, making many of Engine 80's trips short but complicated.

Community leaders in the neighborhood are praising the new engine, which Stowell said could expand from 12 hours to 24 hours as more construction continues.

"We're very supportive of this new coverage," said Dominic Li Mandri, district manager for the East Village Association, noting that the neighborhood now has about 20,000 residents.

A fire station devoted has been discussed for Broadway and 13th Street near the city's Police Department headquarters. But as with most new city fire stations, that is years from happening.

The labor union representing city firefighters said it's upbeat about the peak-hour engine, especially in the East Village.

"This idea has been kicked around for several years," said George Duardo, the union's president. "The pressures in these dense areas are difficult."

Duardo said the union is also interested in possibly having peak-hour engines that aren't tied directly to one station, which would allow them to be deployed as replacements for engine companies that are off-duty for training.

Roving engines could also be deployed strategically in areas with high call volumes in late afternoon and evening commute hours. And they could help serve the city's South Bay neighborhoods, which are separated from the rest of the city by Chula Vista and National City.

City officials said several years ago that they were planning to add six peak-hour engines — three in July 2019 and another three in July 2020 — to help make up for missing fire stations across the city.

Stowell said eventually adding that many is a realistic possibility but that the plan is start much smaller.

He said the next likely location is City Heights, where a long-awaited new fire station on Fairmount Avenue has been bogged down by a complex environmental approval.

Even when that approval is secured, Stowell stressed that no money has been set aside for construction.

A new fire station was built recently in University City, and two more are planned in Black Mountain Ranch and Otay Mesa. But those have been funded by developer fees.

"We are seeing new stations come online, but they're in the suburban areas where there is still development," said Stowell, expressing frustration that more urban areas may not get new stations as quickly as they are needed.

Peak-hour engines could help mitigate the impact of the missing stations.

The costs are relatively low, because the engines can come from the city's reserve fleet.

The city also recently freed up some funding that had been used for fast-response squads — two-person crews using pickup truck-style vehicles to assist fire engines.

The city had three fast-response squads operating — one each in Encanto, University City and the San Pasqual Valley. But new stations in Skyline and University City made two of the squads unnecessary.

In San Pasqual, city officials are proposing an increase from one to two fast-response squads.

"It's warranted because of the types of calls, not the call volume out there," said Stowell, referring to vegetation fires and crashes on poorly lit state Route 78 outside Escondido.

"Those are some horrendous accidents out there," Stowell said.

The peak-hour engines and the fast-response squads were both recommended by consultant Citygate in comprehensive analyses of the city's fire coverage gaps conducted in 2010 and 2017.

Stowell, who is retiring this year, said it's probably time for another analysis.

"A lot of things have happened in seven years," he said. "Our service gaps have changed. The commute patterns have changed."

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune .