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