Chief's Monthly Report
Fire Department
Monthly Progress Report
West Valley Fire Department
Yakima County Fire District 12
For the Meeting of June 9, 2020
Agenda Topic: Department Monthly Progress Report
Prepared By: Chief Nathan Craig
Date Prepared: June 4, 2020
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:
Our nineteen recruits have officially started with orientation held on June 1. Station 51 Firefighter Duncan Macleod resigned.
Starting June, we have 101 on call members, 66 in service for operations, 7 support, 19 recruits, 4 medical leave and 5 on leave of absence. Our total number of personnel is 111.
Operations:
In May there were a total of 74 incidents of which 66 were handled by our personnel.
Incidents: YTD
Station 51 9 51
Station 52 23 90
Station 53 5 30
Station 54 6 31
Station 50 23 153
Yakima 0 3
Ambulance Only 8 38
Total 396
Incident Type: Month Type YTD
Fire 7 2 building, 3 vegetation, 1 cooking, 1 trash 29
EMS 49 46 EMS, 3 MVC 270
Hazardous Condition 8 6 power line down, 1 electrical, 1 gas leak 19
Service Call 4 4 assist invalid 17
Good Intent 5 3 controlled burn, 2 smoke call 25
False Alarm 1 1 AFA 18
Action Taken: Month Type YTD
Canceled enroute 6 1 EMS, 1 AFA, 2 AA Yak, 2 AA Highland 37
Extinguishment 4 1 MA brush, 1 Bldg, 1 power pole, 1 trash 35
Provide BLS 39 230
Assist Invalid 4 16
Investigate 15 2 control burn, 3 MVC, 5 EMS, 1 brush, 2 smoke, 2 haz 69
Other 7 2 Control traffic, 4 establish safe area 9
Automatic Aid Received (both agencies respond) Automatic Aid Given
From Highland 0 To Highland 2
From Yakima 0 To Yakima 1
From Gleed 0 To BIA 0
YTD 2 YTD 14
Mutual Aid Received 0 Mutual Aid Given 4 (Yakima-4)
YTD 1 YTD 8
Response Times: (Target= within 1 mile of station 8 minutes or less, add 2 minutes every mile after) Qualifying Alarms: 45mo, 255yr, Target met: mo 38 (84%) yr 184 (72%), Target not met: mo 7 (16%) yr 71 (28%)
Losses: Losses in May were $250,000 and 3 acres of wildland burned all from the same incident off South Ahtanum Road, an outdoor burn got out of control burning 3 acres and destroying a triple wide mobile home causing $200k in damage to the home and $50k in contents lost.
Logistics:
Belfor Construction is still working on the repairs to the Station 51 office, we hope to have the project finished in the next week or so.
Yakima County has determined Phase II of the Station 51 project will require a level one review which could take between 4-6 weeks, we have submitted the necessary information which has no overall property use changes from the original so we are hoping for a quick turnaround. The level one review does not require public hearings or any of the lengthier processes.
The LED lighting at Stations 52 and 54 is complete and paperwork for reimbursement is submitted to PP&L. The landscaping of the rock garden at Station 54 is complete and both the Station 53 fence and Station 54 extractor are on order.
Budget/Finance: By Officer Boisselle
The final quotes from banks/financial institutions are included in the packet for the Station 51, Phase 2 expansion. Chief Craig has signed an intent agreement with Kitsap Bank. The final Resolution is in the packet as well, this will confirm our intent and get the ball rolling for our financing.
Department Training and Safety: By Captain Jim Johnston
May Drills included: Strategic Planning (all stations at Training Center), Equipment Check, Drafting, and Ladder Operations (51 & 53), OTEP Workshop A (make-up from March for 52 & 54)
Developed the June Drill Schedule: Equipment Check / Station Drill, Extremity Splinting, Safety Stand Down (Responder Safety on Roads), and District Circuit Drill.
The 2020 Recruit Class has started with June 1st with the Orientation night followed by Advanced First Aid, then Wildland training which will wrap up on July 11th then Structural will start on August 31st. Currently we have 12 Firefighters and 7 Support Services.
On June 3rd we held our 2nd quarter Safety Meeting.
The turnout dryer at Station 53 is in service now, this will allow us to dry three sets of Structural PPE or six sets of Wildland PPE, this should speed up the turnaround time to get gear back in service faster.
All external training opportunities have been put on hold due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Fire Prevention/Public Education: By Captain Johnston
At this time all in person Prevention and Public Education opportunities have been put on hold. We will be putting messages on the Reader Boards and on Social Media.
Recruitment & Retention: By LT Chris Lyons
In May we completed the final portion of the hiring process. All the applicants that called and confirmed showed up and participated in the process. Performing the physical ability test and the interviews in the same day worked very well, I might consider continuing to run the test/interview process this way in the future. We brought on a total of 19 new members, 12 for response operations and 7 for support services. We hired several new members that are entering the Department with some previous experience and they are very eager to start responding.
In May I sent out a retention survey to our members. The survey was designed to get the members input on policies, operations, time commitment and give any other input that they felt like sharing. I gave the results to Chief Craig and will be using this information in our Officer Development.
Futures Program / Cadet Program: By LT Chris Lyons
We hired 2 cadets and two firefighters from the high school program this year.
Grants:
This past month we submitted three AFG grants and are currently working on a FEMA grant from the disaster declaration for sanitation supplies. The three AFG grants were under SAFER, Safety & Prevention and Covid-19. The Covid-19 grant was submitted as a reimbursement for PPE purchased for the pandemic, the Safety & Prevention is for a high-performance CPR manikin and the SAFER grant is written for exercise equipment. We are working through the FEMA requirements for the disaster declaration and plan to submit for the Aero-Clave decontamination machine as well as all the sanitizer and cleaning supplies purchased during the pandemic.
We also submitted a grant from the Anheuser-Busch Emergency Drinking Water for Wildland Firefighters program for 6 pallets of water, in our application we identified Highland, Gleed, Naches Heights and Naches as departments near us to distribute water to, of course we would also share with District 5 or Grant 3 since they shared their water with us in the past.
Interlocal:
June 18th Tony Miller will be updating the County Chiefs at our regular meeting regarding the progress of the ambulance RFP. The radio group has not held a meeting since the state shut down.
Strategic Plan:
Our citizen survey for the plan update is live on Survey Monkey and has been advertised in our newsletter, web page and social media. The survey is 10 questions and covers the information identified in our current plan we need input on. Our workshop is scheduled for June 17th, if the Board is available that day…
Good of the Order:
We have had a new member test positive for Covid-19, the exposure was not at the Department however a few members worked near the individual before any signs or symptoms were present. We have another two members in the testing process at this time. Jim has adjusted the recruit schedule based on the positive results of one recruit and will continue to adjust based on any other results. We have mandated the use of facial coverings whenever within 6 feet of another member, we are still planning drills however we are eliminating having all stations together for the Safety Stand Down next week. All EMS calls require the use of gloves, eye protection and a surgical mask which we have a decent supply of at this time.
Respectfully,
Nathan Craig
Fire Chief