George Esbensen, Eden Prairie Fire Chief

Early in January, the Fire Department was contacted by our neighbors to the east at Bloomington Fire to see if we wanted to “compete” in a “Battle of the Badges” event to donate blood to the Memorial Blood Centers. Of course we agreed, what a great cause to support and the firefighters of the EPFD are a very competitive bunch and always up for a challenge. The program goal is based on getting a 5% donation rate from the overall size of the group, so for Eden Prairie with almost 100 firefighters our goal was set at 5 people donating over the course of the month of January.

As you can see from the comments below, our folks and their friends really stepped up. Not only did the EPFD do well on a percentage basis, but also in terms of just the pure number of folks donating blood. Here are excerpts from the Blood drive coordinator:

“The results are in and the Eden Prairie Fire Department is the January 2010 Battle of the Badges Champion. Eden Prairie had ten times the donor goal and easily surpassed Bloomington Fire who also had an impressive rate of 4.7 times the donor rate. Eden Prairie had 48 total donors compared with Bloomington at 40.”

Of course the big winner here is the Blood Center. Thanks to everyone for taking time to donate to this great cause! Even though this contest is over, the need for blood donations goes on every day. If you are willing to do so, please contact the Memorial Blood Center for the donation location nearest to you, blood is always needed.

I just received a note from Allen Nelson, Eden Prairie’s Fire Marshal and wanted to share excerpts from it. Allen’s message is spot on and well stated. Allen’s message said in part the following:

“I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss the fire deaths for last year in Minnesota and wax philosophically a bit about the significance of this and where we go from here. There were 32 total fire deaths last year. This compares to 52 in 2008. Since 1970, the highest total was 134 in 1976. In 1978 the total was 85 with 91 in 1979.

The ‘78 and ‘79 numbers are significant to me because I was at fires in both years where 2 of the people died. Just before Christmas, 1978, I was at a fire where 2 young children died. I had been on that fire department for 6½ months at the time of the fire. Doing overhaul on that fire and seeing the tree with the presents under it that the kids would never have a chance to open was difficult. Then, two months later, in February of 1979, we responded to a fire where a young couple that had their engagement party a few hours before died as a result of a dropped cigarette. I remember thinking after the 2^nd double fatal fire in 2 months before I had a year on the department, that this wasn’t always a lot of fun, like I thought it would be.

Those fires convinced me that we as a fire service had to do all we could to prevent this type of tragedy. That is why I took the opportunity to get into fire prevention work. While I am proud of the work all of us in the fire service to set this new record of least fire deaths in recorded history of Minnesota, I don’t believe that our work is done. The often asked question when talk turns to fire is “How many deaths are an acceptable level?” Some people seem to believe that there is just a certain amount of “bad things” that are going to happen to people, and only so much we can do to stop or prevent that. I firmly believe, and am proud to belong to a department that also believes, that the proper answer to the above question is “ZERO!!”

I will continue to work during my career, and after I retire, to get to that acceptable number. I don’t believe it will be easy, nor do I believe we can reach it quickly, but I DO believe it’s an obtainable goal. Fire sprinklers in all buildings, including homes, is just one step toward this. I invite you to join me in this endeavor.”

I couldn’t agree more with Allen about the impact that Fire Prevention and Public Education can have. if you would like to know what you can do to help spread the word and make a difference let me know, we welcome all the help we can get.

As the story goes, about 15 years ago Joe Wallin, now the Minnetonka Fire Chief began making Eggs Benedict for his firefighters around Christmas time. Well that tasty tradition continues, and today I was lucky enough to be invited to the event and sample Joe’s famous Eggs Benedict.

Joe is a first class person, an excellent fire chief and now I know an excellent cook too!

That is Joe on the left and his Fire Marshal, Kevin Fox (nice hat, Kevin) on the right.

As crazy as it might seem only about 70 percent of firefighters across the country buckle-up when riding in fire apparatus, this is a shockingly low compliance rate and one that needs to be addressed. A number of firefighters, nationally are killed each year after being in accidents and getting thrown from the fire apparatus.

Last year the leading organizations in the fire service put together a program to encourage seatbelt use, and educate firefighters about the dangers of not wearing their seat-belts. Along with the program came a process to get all firefighters to sign a pledge to wear their seat-belts 100% of the time.

I am glad to report that in Eden Prairie, seatbelt usage has always been a priority and compliance has been outstanding, but we still asked each of our firefighters to sign the pledge and in doing so, we achieved 100% buy-in from our staff on the use of their seat-belts. I know that we will continue to focus on this important message and our folks will continue to wear their seat-belts.

Every year Eden Prairie Firefighters get to test their skills against one another in a competitive team event we call the “Firefighter Rodeo”. The event consists of a series of skill stations that mimic real life firefighter tasks on the fire ground. Each team goes as rapidly as possible from one station to another without stopping. The event is quite taxing.

Nine teams competed in the event and the times were very close. The winning team is pictured below with their trophy, which was awarded last night.

Pictured from left to right are: Firefighter Nate Maier, Lieutenant Jeremy Hoehn, Firefighter Keith Puchalski, Firefighter Casey Hoeschen and Firefighter Eric Meiners.