The Fire Chief’s Blog

Late last week Minnesota got the call from Iowa for assistance on several levels to help deal with the effects of their flooding. One of the assets requested was a team from Minnesota’s All Hazard Incident Management Organization.

Eight highly trained and dedicated members left for Iowa last Sunday and are there for 10 days. All Hazard Incident Management Teams are a relatively new concept and the Minnesota Organization has only been around for about 3 years, there are 60 members in the organization and when a full team gets deployed it can have up to 14 people. The basic function of the team is to arrive at a destination where local capabilities have been exhausted, literally and figuratively and develop or enhance an organizational structure that will support getting the necessary work done to bring order to chaos. You can click on this link and read the articles on Oakville and other places that have suffered from the flooding.

One of the myriad of things that the Minnesota Team is organizing in Iowa is searching every structure to be sure there aren’t any unaccounted for people still inside. These could be victims that didn’t make it out, or victims that might have been washed into the structures during the time when the most severe flooding took place.

In order to conduct the searches the team called in several USAR Teams from the Minneapolis area. USAR stand for: Urban Search and Rescue. These teams are highly trained to search in challenging conditions in a methodical manner to insure that a factual accounting can take place.

Below is a picture of some members of the USAR team wading into a structure to begin a search. The picture was taken by Fire Inspector Scott Taylor. Scott is a member of the All Hazard Incident Team that was deployed. Scott’s role for this deployment is to be the Safety Officer.

It is my great privilege to be a member of one of Eden Prairie’s two Rotary Clubs. I belong to the morning club, but there is a noon club as well. The morning club meets every Tuesday at 0730 hrs at Biaggi’s Restaurant.

The meetings go for about an hour and are always interesting. The club, like all rotary Clubs, is involved in local as well as international helping and giving. Today’s speaker was Kathy Veurink. She is highly place in the local Republican Party Organization and gave an overview of her involvement and what the local group is doing. Rotary encourages a sharing of diverse opinions and that makes each and every Tuesday morning meeting a worthwhile investment of time and energy.

Pictured below is a shot of part of our regular crowd of about 50 Rotary members, all are paying close attention to the presentation. If you would like more information about Rotary International simply click on this link.

At last night’s Council Meeting thirteen new CERT members were recognized for recently completing their six week training course and joining our vibrant CERT program. With this group of new CERT members we now have 104 total members spread throughout the city. Five years ago we began our CERT program with the hope of someday getting 100 members, so mission accomplished.

Along with the CERT members we have a dedicated staff of firefighters that have taken on the task of doing the initial six week training course along with ongoing quarterly training. Pictured in their “Class A” Fire Department uniforms are CERT instructors; Assistant Chief Kip Springer (far left), Captain Ray Carlson (left-hand side of podium), Captain Tony Liddell (middle of podium) and Captain Mike Stein (right-hand side of podium).

During the recognition ceremony Mayor Phil Young (second from the left) greeted and congratulated each CERT member as their names were read. Each CERT member provided a brief bio that was read as well. As usual we have a very diverse group of citizens that are CERT members and their diverse skill sets are part of what makes them such a valuable asset to the city if we experience an event where they are needed.

Congratulations to the CERT Class of 2008!