The Fire Chief’s Blog

A year ago our Fire Department decided to conduct all recuit training in-house, we worked out an arrangement with Hennepin Technical College and got trained in the delivery of their top flight curriculum.  The first class went very well.  Rather than rest on our laurels we decided to approach two of our regular mutual aid partners to see if they would like to join in with us.  Both the Bloomington and Edina Fire Departments signed on.

 This year’s training program is well underway as it reaches the mid-point of the schedule.  Lieutenants, Captains and Chief Officers from each department take turns teaching this year’s group of 20 recruits.  By spreading the program across three departments we get a better size class to teach and also spread the teaching workload over a broader group.

Last night I was part of a team of 8 officers from all three departments that taught the hands-on portion of fire suppression techniques.  We even had a guest instructor, Fire Chief Luke Stemmer from St. Louis Park. 

Judging by the smiles on the faces of the recruits and the instructors, the training went very well.  Many important lessons were learned in the safe confines of our world class training facility.  These are lessons that can mean the difference between a safe experience on a real fire scene or one that potentially ends with injury. 

There are many benefits to our joint training program, one of the long-lasting benefits will be the familiarity that these recruits will always have with one another.  As they move up the ranks in their respective department’s these new people will have contacts that will last them a lifetime and keep our three departments connected for the long haul.  Operating in concert at a large scale event doesn’t happen by accident, this kind of initiative is just one example of how we keep the cohesiveness moving forward.

Without first-rate mutual aid partners and an exceptional facility this program never happens.  Thank you to everyone involved!

Yesterday afternoon was the official groundbreaking for our new fire station to be located in southwest Eden Prairie. Yesterday’s event marked the end of a two year process to identify and acquire a suitable site and then design a building that met our current and future needs all the while staying within budget. I have been fortunate to have a supportive group of people behind this project all the way. The support, of course, begins with the citizens of the fine city. Next is the support of all of our City Council members, followed by Scott Neal our City Manager. Last but not least has been the support and input from the members of the fire department. I would especially like to recognize the efforts of the building committee members: Rod Uting, Roger Anderson, Ward Parker, Tim Peltier, Fred Ziebol, Chuck Siebert and Rick Hammerschmidt. These seven people worked tirelessly to bring the design process to a successful conclusion.

Now the “fun” part begins, the actual construction process. Our General Contractor, CM Construction is set to begin moving equipment onto the site on Monday April 24th. Construction is expected to be completed by this time next year. With the location of this fire station our ability to serve the residents of southwest Eden Prairie will be greatly enhanced. Additionally we will be able to provide a faster response to mutual aid requests from our frequent mutual aid partner Chanhassen Fire. Once highway 312 is completed through the city of Chaska or two cities will be only about 6 minutes apart and we will be able to utilize each other for timely mutual aid support as well.

Our final piece to the whole puzzle is the ongoing process of recruiting great people to join our volunteer ranks. We are currently kicking off a new recruiting process with the goal of getting closer to our newly authorized strength of 95. If you or somebody you know is interested in joining please contact me for more information.

From left to right: Building Committee Members-Rod Uting, Ward Parker, Tim Peltier, Roger Anderson and Rick Hammerschmidt.

To my right, Mayor Tyra-Lukens, Councilmember Ron Case, Councilmember Phil Young, Councilmember Brad Aho and City Manager Scott Neal.

This past weekend the Fire Department responded to two seperate structure fires. Both fires were well underway when the first arriving units arrived on-scene. Both fires started on outside decks and quickly spread to the roof area of their respective structures.

The first fire was reported at about 0100 hrs on Sunday morning, everyone got out of the house without incident and there were not any firefighter injuries, both very good things. The house was significantly damaged by the fire, the repairs will take between 3 and 6 months to complete. Apparent Cause: Discarded smoking materials on the deck on the back side of the house

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The second fire was reported to us about 1800hrs on Sunday evening. Again the first arriving fire vehicles found an apartment building with substantial fire in the roof area. While is appeared that all occupants were out safely, we couldn’t be certain that the two apartment units directly involved were clear, a crew was sent into each unit to do a quick search for victims. No people were inside either apartment. Our police officers had done a great job of seeing to it that the units not directly impacted by the fire were unoccupied, that saved us time and allowed us to concentrate our efforts on the apartments being directly impacted. We called neighboring departments from Bloomington, Chanhassen, Edina, Hopkins and Minnetonka to help battle the fire. Apparent Cause: Discarded smoking materials on the deck of a top floor apartment.

Total loss for the day is estimated to be about $1,000,000, there were 17 families displaced and over 100 firefighters spent hours battling these two fires. All of this damage and heartache could have been avoided by a little more care when handling cigars and cigarrettes.

Last year the state of New York passed legislation requiring all cigarettes to be self extinguishing. The complete data is not in yet, but I have talked to people from New York and they tell me these kinds of senseless fires are dropping. Canada has enacted the same legislation nationwide.

Next year the Minnesota State Fire Chiefs may try again to convince our state legislators to pass legislation requiring self extinguishing cigarettes. There is strong pressure against this move from the tobacco lobby, but if all of Minnesota’s concerned citizens get involved, call their respective legislators and voice their support for fire resistive cigarettes we can join other progressive states and reduce the loss of property, injury and life to these highly preventable fires.

There are many deserving professions that have weeks dedicated to recognizing their efforts. 

This week it is the turn of telecommunicators to be recognized, I can say on behalf of all first responders in our city that our telecommunicators do an outstanding job of providing the link between people in distress and the responders.

This weekend was another shining example of the outstanding efforts that our highly trained and motivated telecommunicators provide to us on a regular basis.  There was the report of a fire on the roof of one of our apartment complexes on Sunday evening.  As I approached the scene from a few miles away it was apparent that this had the potential to be a large scale fire.  I immediately contacted our dispatchers (telecommunicators) to request aid from 5 surrounding fire departments and move all communications to a radio channel specifically designed to handle this kind of event.  The entire process went without a hitch thanks to our calm and knowledgeable team in our 9-1-1 call center.  Only if you spend time with our dispatchers during one of these crazy events can you appreciate the way they transform sometimes highly stressed calls into the meaningful details that are needed by responding fire, police and ems providers.

My sincere thanks and admiration to this fine group of professionals!