Consultant: Lafayette Parish Needs 15 Fire Stations

A consultant says 15 additional fire stations are needed in unincorporated parts of Louisiana’s Lafayette Parish to protect citizens and keep insurance costs down.

Tom Cassisa, a fire rating consultant hired by Lafayette Consolidated Government, presented the findings Tuesday of the parish’s fire protection operations.

The Advertiser reports the city of Lafayette has paid firefighters, but unincorporated parts of the parish rely on volunteers. With jobs and family demands, Cassisa says volunteers are often hard to find in some parts of the parish.

The fire rating for unincorporated Lafayette Parish was Class 5 in 2013, the most recent evaluation. Cassisa says it would have been Class 6 except LCG provided radios that barely provided enough points in the rating system to boost it to Class 5.