What is Lehigh Acres Fire Dept trying to hide now?

Why is the Lehigh Acres Fire being secretive when comes to answering a few questions?

What are they hiding and why are they refusing to be transparent to the media or the citizens of Lehigh Acres?

We truly thought that Fire Chief Robert Dilallo and Asst Chief Ralph Ketron, Jr where honorable men and would do anything in their power to help the community of Lehigh Acres? But it’s starting to look like we were wrong.

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We emailed them and call them and NOT even a NO COMMENT.

Now they have told us they all requests must go through the Fire Districts attorney Richard Pringle.

First, Chief Robert Dilallo by state law is the holder of the district’s information, not Pringle.

That is a violation of Florida statutes and Mr. Pringle knows this too well.

The Lehigh Acres Gazette is trying to get to the bottom of two different stories:

First one story: The memo from Lee County director of Public Safety Benjamin Abes (Click here to read it) dated 2/22/2019 dealing with the COPCN renewal. The COPCN is the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity to provide Advanced Life Support Transport Service.

And second story: Is the $10,000 contribution that Wright Construction made to the PAC.

What are the Fire commissioners and the Chief’s so wearied about THE TRUTH?

Abes’ report states that District is out of compliance and is deficient in two of the three metrics that the county uses to grant the Lehigh Acres Fire District the COPCN to run the ambulances.

One: Daytime out-of-chute compliance (this time when the station gets the call to the time the ambulance leaves the station) according to the county Lehigh Acres Fire personnel on average is 2 seconds to slow.

Two: The average response time is 11 minutes and 7 seconds but according to county ordnance 08-16 section seven response time of 8 minutes and 59 seconds is required for Delta and Echo calls.

What is a Delta or Echo call – Delta calls are high acuity calls like chest pain, severe difficulty breathing, and major motor vehicle accidents (rollover, entrapment, etc.).  Echo calls are patients that are either not breathing or do not have a pulse.

Also, the Lee County Comminutions Director Betsy Clayton has refused to set up a 10-minute interview with Lee County Director of Public Safety Benjamin Abes why? When pushed Clayton still would not give a reason why not.

Following are the questions we submitted to the Chief’s

Is Lehigh running 4 or 5 ambulances? And from what stations? Since the memo that Abes wrote on 2/22/2019 calls for a fifth ambulance? —- We need one or two sentence answer only

How are you fixing the out of chute daytime number?  —— We need one or two sentence answer only

Since the depart has no money to build station 6 in north sunshine …. what is the goal about the call times to that area?   —— We need one or two sentence answer only

What are your current calls times for each station and the Avg for the Dept for Delta and Echo calls???  ……. It’s one NUMBER and you should already have it on file 

What are your current calls times for each station and the Avg for the Dept for other calls?  ……  It’s one NUMBER and you should already have it on file … USED TO BE IN THE COMMISSIONER PACKET MONTHLY!!!

Since most of your calls are medical calls could you run six ambulances? One at each station and one stand by at station 104 or at another location centrally located? or running a non-transport rescue vehicle to the scene?  …. We need one or two sentence answer only

Did you or anyone in the district know about the $10,000 contribution that Wright construction made to the PAC during the election? Who hired Terry Miller? —- We need one or two sentence answer only

So why are they hiding and refusing to answer 7 simple questions the Chiefs should already have answers to.

Transparency has to happen in government, especially in a department in that citizens have to depend on for life and death issues.

Trust is earned when actions meet words so where are the words needed from the Fire Chief Robert Dilallo?