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West Valley Firefighters

Quarterly Newsletter

1st Quarter of 2012

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Chief's Monthly Report

Chief's Monthly Report

Agenda Topic:            Department Monthly Progress Report

Prepared By:              Chief Nathan Craig

Date Prepared:           March 8, 2024

 

The primary purpose of this report is to keep the Board of Fire Commissioners informed as to the activities and progress on major programs or objectives.  The items listed, as near as possible, are in priority order.  As a second purpose, this report will be shared with the Officers Management Team and all fire personnel.

 

Personnel:

The only personnel changes last month were hiring one new on call Member and leave granted for one Member.

Starting March, our total on-call Members is 78, 60 operations, and 12 support.  We have 5 on leave and 1 on light duty.  Our total number of personnel is 89.

Operations: 

In February there were a total of 68 alarms in our District, 53 we responded to, 12 ambulance only calls and 3 YFD covered.

Incidents:                                                  YTD                   Incidents by Zone       YTD Zone               

Station 51                   5                     14                                14                    33 (26%)

Station 52                   12                   24                                21                    47 (37%)

Station 53                   9                    22                                13                    35 (28%)

Station 54                   4                     9                                  5                      12  (9%)

Station 50                   23                        58 (1 Duty)                                            127

Yakima                        3                     4

Ambulance Only         12 (3 Lift)        24

Total                                                 155

 

Incident Type:                        Month            Type                                                                YTD

            Fire                              3                      3 bldg (2 AA)                                                      8

            EMS                             55                    47 EMS, 7 MVC, 1 AMA                                  124

            Hazardous Condition      0                                                                                           4

            Service Call                 5                      5 Lift (3amb)                                                   9

            Good Intent                2                      Outdoor Burning                                               2

            False Alarm                 3                      3 AFA                                                              8

           

 

Action Taken:                         Month            Type                                                             YTD

            Canceled enroute       4                      1 MVC, 1 AFA, 2 AA                                        16

            Extinguishment          1                      Bldg                                                                         3

            Provide BLS              51                                                                                       110

            Assist Invalid            5                                                                                         10

            Investigate               7                      2 AFA, 2 MVC, 1 AMA, 2 Outdoor Burning                            15

            Other                       1                      ID Hazards                                                     1

 

Automatic Aid Received (both agencies respond)    Automatic Aid Given                                    

From Highland            0                                  To Highland                1

From Yakima               0                                  To Yakima                  1

From Gleed                 0                                  To BIA                       0

YTD                  4                                              YTD                 6         

 

Mutual Aid Received             0                                  Mutual Aid Given       0

            YTD                           0                                              YTD               0         

 

A barn fire caused $35,000 in losses last month in District.

 

Response Times: (Target= within 1 mile of station 8 minutes or less, add 2 minutes every mile after) Qualifying Alarms: 42mo, 101yr, Target met: mo. 32 (76%) yr. 68 (67%), Target not met: mo. 10 (24%) yr. 33 (33%).

Department Training and Safety: by DC Jim Johnston

February Drills included: Equipment Check / Station Drill, OTEP Module 1 – (Stroke, Seizures, and Anaphylaxis) and LUCAS Training, Building Construction & Fire Protection System Review, and Ladder Fundamentals and Maintenance.

Developed the March Drill Schedule: Equipment Check / Station Drill, OTEP Workshop A – (Stroke, Seizures, and Anaphylaxis), Drafting, Brush Truck Review / Fire Shelter Video & Throw, and a Truck 51 Training night.

On February 14th the Safety Committee met for the first quarter meeting.

On February 23rd two of our fulltime firefighters participated in joint training with Yakima Fire Department at Station 95. 

Update on current Recruit class…. The three recruits (one each from West Valley, Highland and Gleed) completed their Advanced First Aid and are now in Wildland class with the August hired recruits.  Classroom wildland training will occur all of March with a Field Day scheduled in May that will be held at District 5 Sawyer Station #7.

Recruitment / Retention: by DC Jim Johnston

On February 14th I met with Jed Watters from the West Valley Innovation Center on partnering with them for the Cadet program. 

 

Fire Prevention/Public Education: By Officer Boisselle

West Valley will have the EDITH House April 22-25, working on scheduling with individual schools.

 

Budget/Finance: By Officer Boisselle

Will present the updated Levy Lift resolution at the meeting, which has been updated with the suggested changes.

Logistics: 

We ordered three defibrillators through AMR purchasing and ordered the 1” wildland hose budgeted this year.

Acquiring a specification for refurbishing Tender 52 has been difficult.  This past month I created a draft specification using the NFPA standard. I shared this with Captain James and Lieutenant Pfaff to review and see what is missing.  Once the specification is finalized, we will go to bid for the work, I am hoping to establish a timeline with the successful bidder for the tender to not be out of service during wildland fire season.  We may end up waiting until fall to send the tender in depending on the timeline to refurbish.

The emergency generator at Station 53 was commissioned into service and the board of the new generator was malfunctioning, a replacement has been ordered. At this time the generator can be manually started and will function properly, just the automatic start process is affected.

Strategic Plan:

 

As we progress into spring it will soon be time to begin the information gathering process to update the plan, we will need to develop a survey for residents and the feedback process for Members.  Starting now we should give some thought to global issues facing the District to include in the plan.

 

In March we will finish the first quarter action plan focusing on mutual aid agreements, wildland defensible space and once March is over our quarterly fuel consumption review.

 

Grants:

 

We utilized the DNR Phase I grant program to order wildland firefighting supplies and equipment. We were notified the BLM grant we applied for last year for a water tender will carryover automatically into 2024.  We received 4 LUCAS CPR machines from the EMS Office that were acquired with ARPA funds. 

 

We submitted an AFG to replace Engine 54, to show the cost/benefit of awarding the grant we requested $450k of an estimated $600k apparatus.

 

Interlocal:

 

We have a final draft for the Wildfire Ready Neighbors program, this year we are including some events at Station 54.

 

The YCIC committee working on the county wide radio project was notified last month of a list of concerns from the Fire Chiefs Association regarding the project, most notably if the communications tax is passed in the county will any of that funding go to maintain our existing systems since we elected to be in phase II of the project.  More meetings and possibly some governance changes will be held in the next few weeks.  At this time, they are planning to put the issue on the ballot in spring of 2025.

 

Good of the Order:

 

The Association is hosting an egg hunt on March 30th.

During our 2023 awards banquet Firefighter Justin Nicklous was selected as our 2023 Firefighter of the Year and Firefighter Leah Taylor our EMS Provider of the Year in addition to recognizing Members for Clinical Saves, years of service and retirements.

Respectfully,

 

Nathan Craig

Fire Chief