One of my favorite places to hang out is Lake Vermilion near Tower, MN. I have been going there since 1968, when my parents built a cabin on the roadless side of the lake. The lake has over 300 islands and nearly 4000 miles of shoreline and most of the lake is still undeveloped.
The fishing [...]
Monthly Archives: February 2005
Spring Thoughts
February 25, 2005 – 10:18 am
What do the colors mean?
February 23, 2005 – 1:33 pm
Frequently I get asked at fire scenes and during fire staiton tours what the various firefighter helmet colors are for. Throughout the country fire departments use colored helmets to generally classify firefighter rank. There are a few differences but generally yellow or black is for firefighter, red is for Lieutenant and Captain and white is [...]
Efforts Appreciated
February 18, 2005 – 3:55 pm
Yesterday our Fire Marshal, Allen Nelson, received a call from an insurance company official praising the work of Eden Prairie’s firefighters. The message was that our staff’s extra effort to use tarps to cover furniture and other homeowner belongings combined with our use of “Class A” suppression foam at a recent attic fire saved over [...]
A CERT member in action
February 14, 2005 – 4:40 pm
Community Emergency Response Team is a national initiative to get more people involved in helping to keep their communities safe. Eden Prairie received a grant in 2003 and kicked off our initial CERT program by training two classes of citizens in the CERT curriculum. We now have a total of 36 CERT members. Our long-term [...]
Another Cooperative Effort
February 10, 2005 – 1:54 pm
Recently the Police Chief, Dan Carlson and I visited an ambitious housing project taking shape. This is a classic example of the old saying, “Where there is a will, there is a way”. This house is called the “WHAHLT house”. “WHAHLT” stands for West Hennepin Affordable Housing Land Trust. The house is a cooperative project [...]
Smoke Detectors Work
February 7, 2005 – 2:26 pm
This past Saturday morning at 5:27am I was awakened by my fire pager alerting me to a house fire. While en-route to the scene the first arriving police officer advised that all the occupants of the house had successfully exited. (Our police are very well trained in our fire operations and know the kinds of [...]
What does the Fire Chief do?
February 4, 2005 – 1:10 pm
Recently I received an email from a resident who wanted to know what I spent my time doing during the day to keep busy. After all, this person stated, “this was just a Volunteer Fire Department.”
Without getting into the nitty gritty of my daily assignments and responsibilities I outlined a few of the things that [...]
