As Biddeford’s population grows, the city is considering building a new fire station to reduce response times for the community’s coastal areas.

Biddeford’s median response time for emergency medical calls citywide is about four minutes, which is lower than York County’s median of five minutes, according to Maine Emergency Medical Services.

But for calls coming from coastal areas, Biddeford Fire Chief Scott Gagne said it takes emergency responders from the Central Station downtown about 10 to 14 minutes to arrive to the scene.

“This city is exploding and growing, and we currently staff one station,” Gagne said. “We cover 32 square miles … we have a population that’s growing, we have multiple new buildings that are coming in, we have the mills that are being redeveloped … our coastal area is becoming more and more full-time residents, our college campus is growing.”

Aside from the Central Station located downtown, the city has one other station, which is in Biddeford Pool and is manned by two volunteers. Emergency apparatus from the Biddeford Pool substation usually arrive to the scene even later than the Central Station personnel – if at all, Gagne said, because there aren’t any full-time staff there.

A recommendation on whether to build a new station, including its location, cost and other details, will be made to the City Council by an ad hoc committee by Feb. 1. The City Council could then either make a decision based on the recommendations or send the question to voters as a referendum, said Mayor Alan Casavant.

Casavant said the 11 members of the committee – which was approved Tuesday by City Council – will consist of residents from across Biddeford, including former councilors, industry professionals and others.

Cost estimates haven’t been determined, Casavant said.

“Biddeford has historically been very fiscally conservative … I think today, things have changed a bit,” he said. “People are more astute to understanding how critical it is to have an ambulance get from point A to point B in an appropriate amount of time … The value of life of someone who lives at the Pool is the same as the value of life of someone who lives in the inner core.”

Gagne said for both fire suppression and emergency medical care, time is the biggest thing on their side.

“It all comes down to time,” Gagne said. “After the five-minute mark, we’re extremely concerned with quality of life … and we’re also concerned with flashover and integrity of buildings and things like that.”

A new station, however, still wouldn’t solve the Fire Department’s staffing issues, which started pre-pandemic and, Gagne said, are partly because of fewer volunteers.

“When I started 25 plus years ago, we … were budgeted for 40 call force members and we were full,” Gagne said. “I’m now budgeted for 25 and I maintain 16.”

Gagne said over the past 15 months, they’ve hired about 19 new staff members, and they still have five openings.

And their call volume has gone up. In 2021, the Biddeford Fire Department responded to a total of 5,847 fire and EMS calls, a number that has steadily been increasing since 2010, when they responded to 4,127 total calls, according to city documents.

Casavant said if the new station gets built, they’ll need to find creative ways to staff it.

“The need’s there,” Casavant said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to staff it without undermining the rest of the city in terms of EMS service.”

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