Boone County Fire Protection District will no longer run automatic calls in Columbia

As of Tuesday, the Boone County Fire Protection District will no longer run automatic calls for the city of Columbia.

For several decades, the two fire departments have had an automatic mutual aid agreement. The closest fire station will provide automatic aid and send a unit to an emergency call first, regardless of whether it’s in the city or the county. The county was compensated for those calls.

For instance, the closest Columbia fire station that would respond to the Old Hawthorne neighborhood, located in east Columbia, is the station on Orr Street, which is in central Columbia and about 10 minutes away. The Boone County Fire Protection District has a station just a few minutes away from the neighborhood, so emergency calls would automatically be dispatched to one of those crews.

By 2015, the city of Columbia had requested they reconsider the compensation fee, so the district agreed to continue to provide service for free until a new agreement could be reached. But as of 2018, no agreement has been reached, and the fire district said the city has not been a fair negotiating partner.

Now that the aid agreement is over, the Columbia Fire Department will have to dispatch emergency calls from that central Columbia station to Old Hawthorne, unless it asks for Boone County’s help manually.

The fire protection district will still honor emergency calls if requested and calls on I-70 and Highway 63.

The county has filed legislation in the Senate which would delegate responsibility of the annexed territory to the Boone County Fire Protection District. The city would then be required to compensate the fire district with the fluctuating rate it originally got paid in the ’90s.

Boone County fire officials said they are not having any negotiation talks with the city right now, although both sides have said the door is still open.

The Columbia Fire Department has told ABC 17 News in the past that it is in need of more fire stations to meet the growing need of the city, but city officials said that it is still able to service all areas.

“At the end of the day, the city of Columbia Fire Department is responding to every call within the city limits of Columbia, regardless of whether the county fire department is responding or not,” said city spokesman Steve Sapp.

Sapp said that this should remain a local issue and the state legislature’s involvement could harm the city’s relationship with the county.