The Hollywood Park fire chief told the City Council the department responded to three working structure fires outside the town in the last 30 days and that those calls, plus several other out‑of‑district mutual‑aid runs, have raised the department's average run time.

The update matters because mutual‑aid responses lengthen travel and onsite time for the small department and affect internal response statistics and staffing decisions.

"In the last 30 days, we've had 3 working fires outside of Hollywood Park," the fire chief said, adding that one was a two‑alarm apartment fire that kept crews at the scene for six to seven hours. He said other mutual‑aid responses included residential fires and commercial alarms; one commercial response kept Hollywood Park personnel on scene about an hour and a half. The chief told council the department's median response time increased to 4 minutes 16 seconds after several long trips to other jurisdictions.

The chief described how the department's new reporting software now breaks out mutual aid and inside‑city runs and said he has asked staff to build a report separating response times inside Hollywood Park from those outside the city. He said the longer runs are typically for commercial alarms (schools, large buildings, box stores) or working structure fires and that crews sometimes turn around en route when the incident is controlled.

He also described training and certifications the department has completed: two firefighters finished a combined 160 hours of TCFP inspector training, and the department ran on‑site hose demos to assess replacement needs. On funding, the chief said he applied for and received a $1,200 reimbursement grant from a state training fund (TIFMIS) to cover class and test fees for two inspectors; after reimbursements and small exam fees, the department paid $350 out of pocket and can reuse the grant funds as seed money for additional training. "We can do this up to $15,000 a year," he said, describing the program as a way to stretch a modest training budget.

Councilors asked for more granular response‑time reporting and clarification about mutual aid partners. The chief said partner agencies typically preplan roles at incidents (engines, platforms, battalion chiefs) and that platforms (ladder trucks) are assigned to apartment complex incidents.

Council did not take formal action on the report; the presentation was an informational update.