This is what you’d look like if you fought a blazing fire outside in Eden Prairie, Minnesota on January 18th. It’s cold. It’s wet. It’s hot. It’s ice. It’s fire. It’s dangerous.
This is a photo of a fire in action at 9340 Hennepin Town Road. Despite the best efforts of our Fire Department the building was a total loss. There were no fire fighter or civilian injuries. That’s always the first thing that the Fire Chief and I talk about when debriefing a fire scene. It’s the most important fact to me.
Our Fire Department is a paid on-call department. We used to call it a volunteer fire department, and that description is still somewhat accurate, but fire fighters do receive a small measure of compensation per fire event and a pension upon their retirement. That being said, make no mistake, the driving force for someone on our Fire Department to stand outside in the cold and fight a fire on a January day is not money – it’s a drive to serve their community. It’s a public service motivation.
Compared to citizens in other states, Minnesotans get a great bargain when it comes to the financial cost of fire protection and suppression. According to the Minnesota Taxpayers Association, using 2002 data, Minnesotans paid (on average) $52.81 per capita for fire protection and suppression. That ranked Minnesota 45th among the 50 states + the District of Columbia. Just for reference, Wisconsin ranked #17 at $90.09 per capita. Iowa ranked #43 at $54.82.
As for Eden Prairie, I think that we offer our citizens an extraordinary financial bargain in this aspect of our City operations. The operating budget for our Fire Department in 2004 was $1,572,056. We haven’t audited our books yet for 2004, but our final numbers will be at our below that budget figure. In Edina, where the Fire Department operates with 31 fulltime employees supplemented by 15 paid on-call fire fighters, their 2004 Fire Department operating budget was $3,674,611.
I will be first to admit that comparing our Fire Department cost to Edina’s is not the cleanest comparison to make because Edina Fire also offers emergency medical transportation services. But I think that it does give you an idea about the magnitude in savings that we are able to achieve here due mostly to the volunteer spirit of the paid on-call fire fighters that are ready, willing, and able to go outside on a cold winter day to fight our fires, protect our properties, and save our lives.
It really is quite a bargain, if you think about it.
