Firetruck offroad lights

[thatguy2]

I don’t know how your FD is organized…but it sounds like your dept is separate from the city your hall resides in.

I was a volly and wildland FF. On my VFD, I was the secretary treasurer for several years and I’m quite familiar with your challenges are. Never a chief but truck captain and wildland truck boss.

Our VFD used to operate separate of the city many years ago. They were facing the exact same issues…years of neglect, infighting, old equipment, etc.

Our VFD decided to approach the city in which they reside with a proposal for the City to take over ownership of the equipment and extend insurance coverage to the FFers who would become city employees whom were paid a stipend of $5 per call. and the FD “club” would still run fundraisers, events and the such to purchase equipment together with the city. The club also wrote for grants always. The fire chief became part of the city council.

The club remains a separate entity that operates the equipment..when the tone goes off, they are city employees. The FD gets the benefit of maintained and reliable equipment. The city residents benefit from lower insurance rates as the department has the proper equipment for the fire district. Over the years we systematically updated / replaced equipment. The club bought , built most of the tenders and brush rigs. Never new rigs, but low mile finds that were updated and shined up. Excess funds from the fundraisers are placed into CDs until enough has accumulated to facilitate necessary equipment upgrades (saws, scba, hoses, etc,etc) This was possible as the maintenance was being performed/covered by the city. The old fire engines ultimately were retired and replaced with new conventional conversions. Today, my FD has some of the best equipment and reasonably new turnout gear in the state. They run about 80 calls a year with about 1/2 ems / bandaid buggy.

Something to consider.

The cities do not want to be a part of fire protection. The district was formed in 1982 when the 2 towns that had seperate fire departments and combined to form the fire district. Going to a city owned would actually gut our budget. A fellow fire chief in Galesburg, KS is struggling with just this. He is trying to form a fire district. His city wants out of the fire business and his budget is $22k a year for 94 sq miles and ~75-100 calls a year. Another FD in our county went city then township, then finally a fire district. Our neighbor to the west is kind of a joint venture. The city buys 1 of his pumpers and his medical first response truck. They also pay utilities on the building. His rural fire budget is $40k and they buy his other engine, both (soon to be a third) brush trucks, and the tender. I pitched consolidation at the last board meeting. I don't know what the answer is, but I need community members to start showing up to board meetings.

 

[Admin]

 

[Vikes79]

That doesn’t make any sense for the residents.

it sounds like the residents and or the city councils either don’t know what a properly functioning FD brings for insurance benefits, doesn’t care, or are so small that they are likely already struggling with basic services on the city itself.

It’s unfortunate but if you can’t solve your budget problems via simple agreements and support from the the city’s your department / district covers, you must take a honest look at your rigs and downsize to what you can realistically support.

For example, having two structure engines and not enough bunker gear for your dept means you only have one structure engine….decide what’s more important structure engines or brush rigs.

Same for your brush rigs…why so many to save grass? Seriously. You can fight a crap ton of brush fire with 200 gallons of water on a single axel f350…by changing your tactics. Back burns, drip torches and wildland tactics and hand tools are your friend and are budget and water friendly.

I don’t remember the agency ( forestry service I think) anymore but you can get all kinds of training and wildland gear thru them that will help you with training and tactics.

Sorry for the bluntness of my note…I know it’s not an easy situation a majority of VFD are facing these days. But honestly a FF is nothing without bunker gear, an axe, and a halligan is not helping anyone.

Stay safe Brother!

 

[Smitty335]

That doesn’t make any sense for the residents.

it sounds like the residents and or the city councils either don’t know what a properly functioning FD brings for insurance benefits, doesn’t care, or are so small that they are likely already struggling with basic services on the city itself.

It’s unfortunate but if you can’t solve your budget problems via simple agreements and support from the the city’s your department / district covers, you must take a honest look at your rigs and downsize to what you can realistically support.

For example, having two structure engines and not enough bunker gear for your dept means you only have one structure engine….decide what’s more important structure engines or brush rigs.

Same for your brush rigs…why so many to save grass? Seriously. You can fight a crap ton of brush fire with 200 gallons of water on a single axel f350…by changing your tactics. Back burns, drip torches and wildland tactics and hand tools are your friend and are budget and water friendly.

I don’t remember the agency ( forestry service I think) anymore but you can get all kinds of training and wildland gear thru them that will help you with training and tactics.

Sorry for the bluntness of my note…I know it’s not an easy situation a majority of VFD are facing these days. But honestly a FF is nothing without bunker gear, an axe, and a halligan is not helping anyone.

Stay safe Brother!

We live in a rural area and have a VFD, their not bad and definitely help insurance rates. But when I was a kid the whole community was the fire department, tractors with plows and disks, pickups with barrels of water, wet toesacks, shovels and rakes to beat out the fires. No radios, the old timers knew the land and the wind. Pretty amazing come to think about it.

 

[Vikes79]

We live in a rural area and have a VFD, their not bad and definitely help insurance rates. But when I was a kid the whole community was the fire department, tractors with plows and disks, pickups with barrels of water, wet toesacks, shovels and rakes to beat out the fires. No radios, the old timers knew the land and the wind. Pretty amazing come to think about it.

The most common tool on our rigs was what we called a flapper. Essentially a 10” x 10” mud flap on the end of a pole. You use it like a mop and you can smother a ton of creeping fire in grass in short order.

I remember the one time we left some of them on our wildland truck while being dispatched to a training exercise in western So Dak working on timberland fire. We got laughed at till we showed how effective they were in light grass. Honestly we should have left them home as they were useless for fire line work lol.

 

[thatguy2]

That doesn’t make any sense for the residents.

it sounds like the residents and or the city councils either don’t know what a properly functioning FD brings for insurance benefits, doesn’t care, or are so small that they are likely already struggling with basic services on the city itself.

It’s unfortunate but if you can’t solve your budget problems via simple agreements and support from the the city’s your department / district covers, you must take a honest look at your rigs and downsize to what you can realistically support.

For example, having two structure engines and not enough bunker gear for your dept means you only have one structure engine….decide what’s more important structure engines or brush rigs.

Same for your brush rigs…why so many to save grass? Seriously. You can fight a crap ton of brush fire with 200 gallons of water on a single axel f350…by changing your tactics. Back burns, drip torches and wildland tactics and hand tools are your friend and are budget and water friendly.

I don’t remember the agency ( forestry service I think) anymore but you can get all kinds of training and wildland gear thru them that will help you with training and tactics.

Sorry for the bluntness of my note…I know it’s not an easy situation a majority of VFD are facing these days. But honestly a FF is nothing without bunker gear, an axe, and a halligan is not helping anyone.

Stay safe Brother!

We got a grant so everyone is in structural PPE and wildland ppe. ISO requires a pumper in each station. We learned yesterday our tenders have no iso bearing, so I am ready to sell the death trap, drop to only 1 tender in the district. In the event we get the AFG grant for a pumper tender I want to sell both the pumper and the tender and just run the single truck. It will have reprocussions when the new hauled water calculator comes out but as far as I am concerned they can pay it on their homeowners if they don't want to pay it in taxes. I also want to combine brush trucks and medical response trucks but I am meeting fierce resistance from the firefighters. Our 2 stations are in towns exactly 5 miles apart which complicates things. These folks have gotten so use to having deficient equipment and facilities it is now normalized. Some of the community members are outraged when I tell them about our issues, but nobody shows up to board meetings to hold their feet to the fire.

We fight alot of brush fires and its not uncommon here to have multiple fires going at once. Wildland is a large portion of our call volume and its not just grass out here. Its folks livelihood. That grass is hay, forage, etc. The Flint Hills is big cattle country. Not to mention many times there is livestock threatened. Nearly every fire we respond to is structures threatened by the NWCG definition. We have a 200 gal F-350 and it is worthless for the large running grass fires we encounter. Works great for median fires on the interstate, and it would be great for fighting leaf litter fires off a forest service road. We do back burns when conditions allow, but it seems anymore we are seeing alot more high fire danger days that we can't throw fire down and stop it. They told us to expect 30 more high to extreme fire danger days each year. Everyone around us is going to larger trucks carrying more water. We can blame climate change, ranchettes, etc but those of us on the front lines have watched the transition. These are not the same fires we had 23 years ago when I started. We are also seeing red cedar really take hold so fires are more resistant to control and mopup takes longer. I put in grants for 300 gal foam skid units with class a foam capabilites. We could really use it.
Having all 4 in service happens frequently, and its rare to have less than 3. Kansas is a top 5 wildland fire state with over 5000 reported wildfires even though they estimate 30% of our wildfires go unreported. Less than 70 percent of Kansas wildfires are reported. Here’s why: - Wildfire Today. I will see things on the news like California fire explodes to 800 acres, and it takes 10 hours to do it. Our fire on 3/14 burned 1117 acres and several structures in ~75-90 minutes.

I don't know what our answer is. I have a letter typed to send to a county commissioner. I have been holding off, but I am ready to go scorched earth at this point. We had a 3 step plan when I took over.
1. Everyone in PPE---Mission Accomplished
2. Facilitiy improvements (things like no more leaking roofs, hot water in the stations, bathrooms you are not scared to use, etc)---in progress
3. Equipment Upgrades?---don't know how to convince them its not 1995 anymore.

Big thing is lay the foundation for those that come after us. All these issues are deficiencies. They are not normal and shouldn't be treated as such. Enforce our SOG/SOPS and if they don't work or are no longer applicable rewrite them or scrap them.

Sorry for my rant. I am burned out and over it.