San Bernardino County Consolidated Fire Agencies, the joint powers authority known by the acronym CONFIRE, has already grown to become the largest emergency/fire/urgent medical service dispatch operation in San Bernardino County. Next week the collective will welcome two fire departments into the pool of the authority’s controlling, and permanent, constituent agencies.
Already the permanent provider of dispatch services for eleven county fire protection agencies at the beginning of 2019, CONFIRE in March took on a contract to provide dispatch and communication service to the Chino Valley Independent Fire Protection District and the Victorville Fire Department. This coming week, the Chino Valley and Apple Valley fire departments will move from being agencies associated with the collective by contract to ones chartered as full members.
CONFIRE was formed on May 15, 1990 as a joint powers authority comprised by the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District and the fire departments of the cities of Redlands, Rialto, Loma Linda and Colton to provide hardware, software, services and other items to establish, operate and maintain a joint centralized public safety communications system.
CONFIRE’s system was intended to match and exceed the communications, response and dispatch system employed by the City of Ontario.
In the 1980s, the City of Ontario leapt ahead of virtually all of the governmental agencies in the region, with what was then its state-of-the-art emergency dispatch system. Multiple agencies on the west side of San Bernardino County contracted with Ontario to provide dispatch service, which was run out of the basement of that city’s fire department headquarters.
Using a digitized system that carried out split-second plotting of the locations of a given agency’s vehicles and fixed stations and then calculated response times from those assets to the location of the spot from which requests for emergency response within that jurisdiction were coming, the system directed dispatchers with regard to the most efficient utilization of available fire, paramedic and ambulance units. CONFIRE replicated and improved on that capability.
CONFIRE was established under the aegis of the Joint Exercise of Powers Act of the Government Code of the State of California.
On July 9, 2013, the charter of CONFIRE was amended to allow the addition of the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Protection District as a member agency.
In 2014, the Montclair and Upland Fire Departments contracted with CONFIRE for dispatch services.
Next Tuesday, a second amendment to the charter is to be considered by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to admit the Chino Valley Independent Fire District and the Apple Valley Fire Protection District as parties and members of the Consolidated Fire Agencies.
Acting County Fire Chief Don Trapp has recommended that the board of supervisors ratify the addition of the Chino Valley and Apple Valley districts to the joint authority.
At present, the Colton Fire Department, the Loma Linda Fire Department, the Rancho Cucamonga Fire District, the Redlands Fire Department, the Rialto Fire Department, and the San Bernardino County Fire Department are considered member agencies of CONFIRE.
In addition, the Apple Valley Fire Protection District, the Big Bear Fire Department, the Running Springs Fire District, the Montclair Fire Department, the San Manuel Fire Department, the Chino Valley Fire District, as of March 2019, and the Victorville Fire Department, as of  March 2019, contract for dispatch services with the CONFIRE.
​On April 2, 2019, the board of directors for CONFIRE adopted a resolution recommending that each current party to the joint powers authority take action to amend the joint powers authority to admit Chino Valley as a member agency on the condition that Chino Valley pay the required buy-in amount. Apple Valley had been contracting for dispatch services from CONFIRE since 2009. Its original 10-year contract expired on June 30, 2019. The contract was renewed for a five-year term, but Apple Valley simultaneously initiated the request for membership in CONFIRE. On May 29, 2019, the board of directors for CONFIRE adopted a resolution recommending that each current party to the joint powers authority take action to amend the joint powers authority to admit Apple Valley as a member agency on the condition that Apple Valley pay the required buy-in amount. The other member agencies have approved the addition of both Chino Valley and Apple Valley. The San Bernardino County Fire Department is the final member to approve the addition of both parties.
The CONFIRE Board of Directors consists of its chairman, Loma Linda Mayor Rhodes Rigsby; vice-chairman, Colton City Councilman Ernest Cisneros; and board members Rialto City Councilman Andy Carrizales, Redlands Councilman Eddie Tejada, Rancho Cucamonga Councilwoman Lynne Kennedy and Third District San Berndino County Supervisor Dawn Rowe.
CONFIRE coordinates operations out of more than 100 fire stations serving numerous communities covering the majority of the residents and businesses within the County of San Bernardino. In 2018, the CONFIRE communications center dispatched responses to over 213,000 incidents.