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ORANGE COUNTY FIRE RESCUE STUDY <br />INTRODUCTION <br />1 This section of our report provides the background and methodology relative to <br />2 this study. <br />3 <br />4 <br />5 Background <br />6 <br />7 Orange County, North Carolina is located in Central North Carolina in what is <br />8 called the Triangle Area. It is a demographically diverse county running from <br />9 urban characteristics with a high socio-economic population in the Chapel Hill- <br />10 Carrboro area to ruxal agricultural dominated areas in the northern. portion of the <br />11 county. It also has a growing suburban segment, particularly adjacent to the <br />12 Chapel Hill and Carrboro communities. <br />13 <br />14 With the exception of the Town of Chapel Hill, the County has been served by <br />15 volunteer emergency services providers up until the 1990s. In the early part of that <br />16 decade, the Town of Carrboro transitioned from a volunteer fire department <br />17 supplemented by paid personnel to a full paid staffed department. Chapel Hill and <br />18 Carrboro remain the two only full paid fire departments, with volunteer <br />19 departments providing fire and emergency services throughout the rest of the <br />20 County. <br />21 <br />22 The County's emergency medical service was also provided by volunteer rescue <br />23 squads into the 1990s. These squads added paid personnel to staff EMS apparatus <br />24 and then merged in an effort to provide a more efficient approach to serving. the <br />25 County. When it became evident that the rescue squad could not provide EMS <br />26 response and transport in a cost effective way, Emergency Management assumed <br />27 responsibility for delivering EMS paramedic response and transport and now <br />28 provides those functions through the Division of Emergency Medical Services. <br />29 Special technical rescue functions remain the responsibility of the rescue squads, <br />30 who dissolved the merged entity to revert back to the original structure of two <br />31 organizations. <br />32 <br />33 The County Commission and administration recognized the disjointed nature of <br />34 emergency service delivery and needed an independent third party to help <br />35 determine: <br />2 <br />