The Fire Chief’s Blog

Yesterday the Eden Prairie and Edina fire departments were asked to put on a demonstration for a combined Eden Prairie and Edina Chamber event. The Edina Fire Department demonstrated some of their cool tools for handling technical rescue situations. The Eden Prairie Fire Department demonstrated to live fire simulators. A few brave people from the Chamber’s membership volunteered to take part in the demos. Pictured below are pictures of two members getting geared up to go into the fire simulator. They both enjoyed the experience and made it out unscathed, which is good on both counts. We also allowed people to spray a little water from our fire hoses to see what it is like to handle the force of 200 gallons per minute coming out of a fire hose.

Today I ventured out to Lake Minnetonka with three other people from our department (Assistant Chief Steve Koering, Lieutenant Jeremy Van Beusekom, and firefighter Doug Bourne) to put on a demo with the Long Lake Fire Department (Our boat is basically a twin to theirs) for Ralph John Fritz from Channel 4. The story was centered around unique boats being used in the area. Both of our fire boats were built by Lake Assault Boats for our fire and rescue operations. The story will air on July 14th right after the 10:PM news.

Over the past few days we have caught glancing blows from several storms that have passed through the metro area. Below is a picture I took of the back side of a storm that rumbled over on it’s way east. This storm dropped some brief heavy rain but not much else.

When storms make a direct hit on Eden Prairie the Fire Department usually gets busy. Lightening frequently sets off fire alarms and sometimes will remove shingles from homes, blow out electronics in the home or worse case, start a fire. so far this year we have dodged the bigger storms and all has remained calm. Calm is a good thing in the fire service business!

Late this morning and early this afternoon Fire and Police staff participated in a mini safety program for kids held at Olympic Hills Country Club. The weather was excellent and of course the kids were great!

There were inside activities that included safety information geared for kids as well as a magician and some other entertainment and of course food. Outside we used the Fire Department’s Safety Awareness Trailer to bring some hands-on training to the kids on fire safe behaviors and skills to help them get out quickly if there were to be a fire in their house. I took the picture of the fire truck and the squad car together because it represents how closely and how often fire and police work together in Eden Prairie.

Every two years all EMTs (Emergency Medical Technicians) are required to go through 24 hours of skills refresher. In Eden Prairie we accomplish this by taking the classes in 3 hour chunks every quarter for two years, at the end of the process we are all re certified and the whole process begins again. Today was one of those quarterly classes. Some of the class time is lecture, but most of it is hands-on, the kind of stuff we do in the field.

Below are pictures of the class in action practicing their CPR skills for adults and infants as well as a picture of our two outstanding instructors, Ann Zimmermann-Hohn and Angelo Syyan.

This is a very efficient way to get our 24 hour requirement in, instead of the old days where we did it an a 3 day blitz or twice a week for 3 weeks every other year. The every quarter method also has the benefit of allowing us to get the latest info as it is developing. All in all we like this way of keeping our skills current.

Today we took delivery of a new brush and grass fire rig. This Polaris Ranger is a new approach for us. As the city develops our drivable grasslands have been disappearing with development, we still have grass and brush fires but the terrain is a little harder to get around on with our Ford F-250 based rigs. This rig will allow us to get further off-road without getting stuck and we can also drive between houses to get to the fires without as much damage to lawns.

The new vehicle will be based out of Fire Station #4, eventually we will also replace Brush 21 with one of these. By implementing this strategy we will have both conventional and ATV based grass/brush rigs on both sides of town. Also in the picture is Lieutenant 10, Ward Parker. Ward is one of the members of the Truck Committee, a group that assists the fire command staff with vehicle strategy and specification.

today we took delivery of a new brush and grass fire rig. This Polaris Ranger is a new approach for us. As the city develops our drivable grasslands have been disappearing with development, we still have grass and brush fires but the terrain is a little harder to get around on with our Ford F-250 based rigs. This rig will allow us to get further off road without getting stuck and we can also drive between houses to get to the fires without as much damage to lawns.

The new vehicle will be based out of Fire Station #4, eventually we will also replace Brush 21 with one of these. By implementing this strategy we will have both conventional and ATV based grass/brush rigs on both sides of town. Also in the picture is Lieutenant 10, Ward Parker. Ward is one of the members of the Truck Committee, a group that assists the fire command staff with vehicle strategy and specification.