September 2, 2009 – 10:48 am
The new Airport Crash Truck, Engine 12, is being given it’s final once over by Assistant Chiefs, Steve Koering and Ward Parker. With luck, the truck will arrive here in a few weeks and be ready to go into service by the time of the Open House on October 10th. This truck represents our last planned piece of new apparatus until at least 2022. We have made significant updates to our fleet of large apparatus over the past 8 years and are positioned well for our service delivery missions.
Here you can see a few pre-delivery pictures of the truck. The truck sits up higher than our typical engines since it is a four wheel drive configuration. We hope the truck will be put into service, officially, at our Open House on October 10th.
August 26, 2009 – 9:46 am
The 11th Annual Governor’s Fire Prevention day at the Minnesota State Fair is this Friday. This has become one of the largest single day fire prevention efforts in the country. I would encourage everybody to attend this special day and see what the Minnesota Fire Service is doing every day to help prevent fires and the loss of property and life that results.
Preventing fires is the single best way that we can protect people against suffering a loss from fire. Almost all fires are preventable, what is lacking is people’s commitment to lead a fire safe life. As a profession the fire service needs to continue to ramp up efforts to get the word out about how to prevent fires in the home and workplace. Friday’s event is a good kick-off to helping people understand the importance of fire prevention wherever they live and work.
Checkout the You tube link below that was made at last year’s Fire Prevention Day at the Fair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuLTU65ri4s
August 20, 2009 – 2:27 pm
Okay that one rarely works, but it has been extra busy around here the past few weeks. We experienced two significant structure fires and a fatal plane crash, all the while continuing to wrestle with the best use of taxpayer dollars in the upcoming two year budget cycle. This little increase in activity got me a little off track with my blogging routine.
House fires while not a regular occurrence do happen with some regularity in Eden Prairie on a yearly basis. Every house fire presents it’s own unique circumstances to be dealt with, but we have a fairly big bank of experience to draw from. The first fire was on Burr Ridge and was a major fire from the instant it got called in. Upon arrival our crews found a major house fire underway and the primary mission became preservation of the neighboring structures as well as salvaging what was possible from the house where the fire originated. Crews did an excellent job under intense pressure to meet both objectives. In the second house fire the challenge there was the weather. the fire occurred on Sky Lane and appears to be the result of a lightening strike. While on scene the lightening persisted, making utilization of our 100′ aerial truck a bit of a risk. Everything went well operationally on this fire and like the Burr Ridge fire there were no civilian or firefighter injuries, always a good thing.
Plane crashes, on the other hand, are a lot less frequent and thus present additional challenges to the commanders and responders. The plane that came down last week was unique in that it was not our typical smaller two or four seater, but a twin engine aircraft on a slightly larger scale. Sadly both occupants were deceased upon our arrival, apparently having been killed by the impact of the crash. When a plane crashes it is a big story and news agencies from all the local and a few national outlets showed up. Our Police and Fire Commanders did an excellent job of dealing with the media, as did our City of Eden Prairie Communications staff. I would also like to commend our 911 Center staff for their outstanding work during the plane crash event. After listening to the audio from all of the inbound callers into our 911, our Dispatchers truly do an amazing job of juggling a lot of missions at once.
Eden Prairie residents are an impressive bunch, I am continually amazed by how much our residents are contributing to the betterment of society. Earlier this week Emma Berglund stopped by to present the Fire Department with smoke detectors. Emma just graduated from Benilde-St. Margaret’s and will be attending Iowa State University in the fall, where she is considering a major in Elementary education. Emma was working on a project she was doing to complete the long journey towards earning her Girl Scout Gold Award, the equivalent of the Boy Scout Eagle Scout Award. Emma’s project involved meeting with children and talking about fire safety, helping them draw escape plans for their homes and giving them fire safety tips to talk to their friends and parents about. Along the way, Emma received cash to buy smoke detectors and donations of actual smoke detectors to give to families that need these life saving devices but cannot afford them.
Emma has now donated those smoke detectors to the Fire Department so we can get them out in the community where they are most needed. Emma met with Fire Inspector Chuck Schaitberger to hand off the smoke detectors, thus completing the final step to get her Girl Scout Gold Award! Only about 5% of registered Girl Scouts complete the Gold Award requirements. Thank you, Emma for your work in the area of fire prevention and congratulations on your prestigious award!
Twenty years ago the first Safety Camp was conducted in Eden Prairie and the rest, as they say, is history. Eden Prairie’s Safety Camp has been a huge success locally and has spread nationally as well. As part of the two day camp for kids there are lots of interesting safety topics that are presented by experts in their respective fields. One of the most popular presentations is on weather safety. Minnesota is one of those places where bad weather can appear in just a few minutes and knowing what to do is a very important skill.
Well this year, due in large part to the tough economy, it was tough getting a local meteorologist to commit to coming to Safety Camp and making a presentation to these 180 eager campers. Seems a lot of TV stations are cutting their community affairs departments and sending their camera people and all of their stuff costs money too. Well local Fox 9 Meteorologist Ian Leonard stepped up to the challenge and came to Safety Camp and did a terrific job, at that. Ian was engaging with the kids and delivered a powerful message about how to keep safe if bad weather strikes. Ian also committed to Safety Camp organizers that as long as he lives in Eden Prairie he will always come and deliver his important message.
It is easy to take shots at members of the media, but Ian Leonard is proof that there are a lot of great people out there that put the kids first and will be there to help educate them and give them safety skills for life.
Thank you Ian Leonard for your commitment to Eden Prairie Safety Camp kids, present and future!
Seems like every year around this time, we first responder types begin to see more accidents as a result of home improvement projects that are underway by homeowners. Common calls related to this increase in getting things done around the house include, but are not limited to: Falls from ladders, severe cuts from power tools, contact with buried gas or power lines and falls from roofs. Virtually all of these, sometimes tragic events, are preventable, and yet every year we see the same things over and over.
What can we as first responders do to help spread the word about prevention of these kinds of events?
Well, first of all, we can model good safe practices ourselves. Whether we know it or not, other folks watch what we do and how we do it, whether at home or on an emergency scene, especially the kids. Take a moment and ask yourself before every project if you have taken all the precautions needed to insure a safe outcome.
Secondly, take a look at this website link for some solid prevention ideas for all sorts of common everyday activities that are known to have risks. A little prevention goes a long way. It wasn’t too long ago when seat belts were considered a little utilized option, yet today, most of us wouldn’t think about driving without one. That same story can be true for these other common risks, if we just take the time to think about what we are doing before we do it.
Here’s hoping you have a safe and productive summer season!
There are always a lot of interesting technological innovations coming to the fire service, but this one seems to be in the category of industry changing. I make that statement because this innovation when it gets to market will allow commanders to actually see how there firefighters are doing, physically, while in the midst of an emergency call. The statistics are very clear year after year, we kill more firefighters due to heart attacks more than any other single cause, and it is not even close.
firefighters by nature never want to tell you that they are tired or not feeling well, so they ignore the signs and symptoms of duress until it is too late. The new technology described here will allow real-time monitoring of each individual firefighter for a wide variety of indicators. This link describes what I believe will go down as a major player in the fight against firefighter fatalities. I cannot wait for this to be commercially viable.
A little over a week ago Fire, Police and HCMC medics responded to a cardiac arrest call. When responders arrived the person was in deep trouble and CPR was performed extensively both on-scene, in the HCMC rig and in the Emergency Room at HCMC. The total time CPR was performed was in the neighborhood of 60 minutes, a very long time for that process to continue.
Well today I received a forwarded email from Assistant Chief Tom Schmitz, who was on that scene, explaining that the person has made a remarkable recovery and a lot of the credit goes to the responders from the Fire and Police Departments for their excellent execution of CPR techniques during the whole event. Praise also goes out to the medics from HCMC for their excellent skills and dedication in serving this fellow as well.
Proof that fact is always stranger than fiction, the person that was saved happens to be related to one of the Doctors at HCMC. A lot of times when responders get to a heart attack victim they have been down so long that the prognosis is not too good. In this case everything lined up perfectly and this remarkable outcome happened. Nice job by everybody that helped out that day! It truly takes a team effort to get these kinds of outcomes.
Last night’s training drill was all about dealing with Hazardous Materials Incidents. While big Haz Mat incidents have been rare in our city, when they do happen they require a lot of well trained responders to gain the upper hand. We are very fortunate in our city that the Hopkins Fire Department is so close by and operates one of the state’s Chemical Assessment Teams. The Hopkins Fire Department provides us with quick and expert response for all things related to Haz Mat. Last night they brought their stuff over to refresh our firefighters on the various capabilities that they have and get some hands-on training with their team and their stuff.
One of the great innovations that has been developed is using a tower truck, like our Tower 21 to create a quick way to decon a lot of people in a short amount of time. This system can be set up in about 15 minutes and can handle hundreds of people per hour, that need a quick decon process because they were exposed to some sort of chemical that needs to be rinsed off before they can be treated medically. The pictures below show just how simple and yet effective this process is. All you need is a tower truck, a good water supply and a big tarp (40′ x 80′ in this case). Once in place the people needing decon just walk slowly through the tunnel formed by the tarp and water is showered down from above by nozzles placed along the ladder device.
Eden Prairie and Hopkins Fire Departments go back a long way, in fact Hopkins provided a lot of the fire coverage to Eden Prairie before Eden Prairie formed it’s own Fire Department in 1967. Having a trusted partner like the Hopkins Fire Department makes our ability to deal with Haz Mat incidents just that much more effective, and that is good for our citizens and our firefighters alike.
Below are pictures of the large “Tool box” truck and trailer that Hopkins Fire brings to Haz Mat incidents, they have stuff!
Gas leaks are nothing to take lightly and that was evident just a few days ago out on the east coast. This link will take you to the story and all kinds of support material, photos, video and audio from the event.
The important thing to remember here, is that this fire department had a lot of resources on-hand at this event so that they were able to deal with this near tragic explosion. If they had not had the amount of apparatus on scene that they did, the outcome for the firefighters, and the civilians that they evacuated before the explosion, could have been much worse. There is a good reason why the fire service brings a lot of resources to emergency scenes, and this is just more proof that it makes sense and changes outcomes for civilians and firefighters.
