With six months to go before the new Placentia Fire and Life Safety Department begins running emergency calls, city officials say the process of starting a new agency is on track and they’ll be ready for a July 1 launch.

City Administrator Damien Arrula plans to interview fire chief and battalion chief candidates in the next couple weeks, followed by the rest of the new Placentia Fire and Life Safety Department’s 23 full-time personnel and a roster of reserve firefighters, he said.

Placentia had a patch designed for the city’s new Fire and Life Safety Department, which begins service July 1.

This logo will be displayed on trucks, fire engines and other vehicles the new Placentia Fire and Life Safety Department will use when it launches July 1, 2020.

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An OCFA fire truck leaves Station 35 in Placentia, CA on Wednesday, June 5, 2019. The Placentia city council voted to leave the OCFA and form their own fire department. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)



He’s ordered a mini pumper (with a heavy-duty truck cab in front and a back half that holds hoses, pumps and other firefighting tools) that will be delivered next month and two fire engines should be ready by May; firefighter badges and a logo have been designed.

“Things have overall gone great,” Arrula said. “We’ve achieved all of our milestones to date.”

For more than two decades, Placentia has contracted with the Orange County Fire Authority, a joint powers agency serving 24 cities. But while Placentia officials have said they’ve been satisfied with OCFA’s performance, rising costs that far outstripped other areas of the city budget led them to consider alternatives last year.

From 2009 to 2019, Placentia’s fire service costs rose nearly 47% for the same level of service, the city has said; OCFA officials have countered that they did increase staffing in Placentia around 2017, and they noted pension expenses and contract changes all member cities agreed to have primarily driven cost increases.

Irvine also threatened to leave over what officials said was a disproportionate cost burden, but the city reached an agreement with OCFA that includes a new joint police-fire training center and other benefits. And last year, Garden Grove contracted with OCFA for service, folding its department .

After a contentious meeting last June, Placentia’s City Council voted to break with OCFA and create a new department, which entailed building its own firefighting staff and hiring Lynch Ambulance for medical services.

City officials have projected the change could cost the city $6.1 million in the first year of operation, compared with $7.1 million it would have cost to stay with OCFA, with savings expected to grow significantly over the next decade.

Lynch was granted a contract in June, and since then Arrula has forged ahead with buying equipment, creating plans for employee benefits and training, and planning for the transition.

Placentia owns the two fire stations OCFA now operates from, so those will be handed over during the transition. The city’s Police Department has its own dispatch center and will fold fire and medical calls into its responsibilities.

In addition to hiring and training the new fire department’s employees, Arrula said the city must program its new radios, get a computer-aided dispatch system for fire calls up and running and get moved into its fire stations.

Arrula is also reaching out to neighboring fire departments, including those of Anaheim and Brea/Fullerton, to draft agreements for automatic and mutual aid. Those agreements allow agencies to help each other with large incidents, and they ensure the closest engine or ambulance can be dispatched regardless of which city an incident is in.

Scott Ferguson, a former Murrieta fire chief who is helping Placentia set up its department, said in an email that the process has been an exciting challenge, though not without its trials.

“Everything is new, including the apparatus, personnel and the culture,” Ferguson said. “The department will be small enough to embrace innovation, learn from the lessons and correct course in such a manner that personalizes what they bring to the community.”