The Fire Chief’s Blog

This afternoon staff from our fire department participated with members of our police department assigned to a special tactical team. Without getting into the details too much, the fire department’s role was to perform decontamination operations. Our fire department is one of 8 in Hennepin County that has a “Life Safety Unit”. The unit is a tandem axle trailer. The purpose of the equipment is be able to provide mobile and rapid decontamination of anybody exposed to chemical, biological or radiological materials on-scene.

Today’s drill happened without a lot of fanfare or media coverage. Drills like this one are an important part of the ongoing training taking place around the country on a daily basis. In the picture below you see firefighters helping prepare officers to enter the decontamination “tent”. Our staff has spent a lot of time training with this equipment, the equipment can be deployed in under 7 minutes, including hot water showers, special soaps and post decon garments. “Plan for the worst and hope for the best”, is the motto of these kinds of operations.

Last night I couldn’t sleep and so I wandered downstairs to my PC to work on two internet based classes that I help teach to aspiring fire officers. The two classes are “Fire Administration Advanced” and “Managing Fire Department Personnel” respectively.

My job is to conduct weekly online discussions amongst the students on a weekly topic taken from the week’s reading assignment. At 1:00am I started my work, by approximately 3:00am I was getting ready to retire back to bed when the fire pager went off for a possible gas leak at a business. While the gas leak turned out to be unfounded, a good thing, it always impresses me that at 3:00am, 21 of our dedicated volunteer firefighters turned out in the wee morning hours to lend assistance to this situation.

Our system is not unique, in Minnesota and across the country about 75% of all firefighters are volunteers. These people serve cities ranging from almost 100,00 people (Bloomingotn, MN) to the very smallest towns. Their dedication is amazing. Calls come in at all hours of the day and night and these dedicated women and men drop whatever they are doing and respond rapidly and professionally to mitigate emergency situations.

If you have ever felt the urge to help your neighbors in their greatest time of need and build lasting relationships with other dedicated people like yourself, think about volunteering with your local fire department. I can personally attest to the amazing personal rewards that will be yours.

Currently the Eden Prairie Fire Department is seeking to increase overall staffing from 75 to 95. We are doing this because we are getting ready to build and open a fourth fire station in our city. More information is available by going to the recruit link to our website. Below is the lastest department photo taken this past Fall. New recruits are dressed in the light blue class “B” uniforms. Once they’ve been with us for 12 months they get issued the classic, class “A” uniform.

Click the photo for large, high-res version.

While driving through the city on Saturday I came upon a husband and wife team diligently shoveling out the fire hydrant near their house. I stopped to applaud their efforts since this is a deed that is near and dear to my heart. Wintertime fires present a host of challenges for the fire service. Finding and then clearing out a fire hydrant when you need it most can be a time-consuming task.

The residents I encountered clearly understand that while the fire department is well trained to serve their emergency needs, residents doing their part can aid the process immensely with a little investment of time and in this case some labor too. Thank you to all the residents who take a little ownership in their role as citizens, it is appreciated by all.

Click the photos for large, high-res versions.

We’ve now added RSS to this weblog. What’s RSS?

It’s a radio signal for a website, most commonly used for weblogs. More technically: “Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable “What’s New” for your site.” See Intro to RSS for more info.

The Newspaper Association of America site has an informative article titled Syndication Made Simple. “Just as free e-mail newsletters enable publishers to directly reach readers and promote online and in-paper content, RSS “pushes” headlines and succinct, one-sentence article descriptions to those who subscribe to the no-cost feeds.”

The other side of syndication is aggregation. Here’s an article from Wired News that explains why aggregators are all the rage: Aggregators Attack Info Overload.

This icon is the cue that we’re RSS capable. So train your aggregator to grab content from Dan Carlson’s syndicated weblog.