Happy Birthday to FF Corey Boucher. Corey turned 18 on June 3rd and is now a senior Firefighter.
Engine 83 is at the Minuteman Fire Apparatus facility in Walpole, Mass. We'll be heading to Walpole on Tuesday. I anticipate the truck being there until roughly the 17th. Minuteman will be providing us with training on the truck. Which will be "train-the-trainer" style classes. This training will be provided here at our station. I'll have a schedule out soon. On June 30th, I want to hold a commissioning/dedication ceremony. This will be a formal (Class A uniform) event. In the next few days I'll be asking for some help in getting it all organized.
EMS Protocol updates: The deadline to get this training done is fast approaching! July 1st is the deadline. The training can be completed on-line at MEMSED. We're also going to hold class room training on the updates on June 10 at 0900 and again at 1830. If you don't complete this protocol update training your EMS license may be suspended. Please avoid that!
Basic Fire School: We'll be holding a BLS class from August 24th to October 26th. Typically, Monday and Wednesday 1800-2200, with one Saturday. Classes be hosted by the participating departments. We will be hosting Tools & Forcible Entry, Hose & Foam. Instructors are needed.
Fire Ground Organization: We need to get a little better at organizing the fire ground and setting up an incident command system. There are a lot of moving pieces and while we all have an understanding of ICS, I've noticed we all don't necessarily have the same interpretation and exceptions of the various roles and duties in an IC system. We've made progress in this area, we established the accountability plan, defined alarm assignment & run cards. At last night's officers meeting, we broke the ICS into small elements and over the next few months will develop task oriented SOGs for fire ground operations. To start, we're going to look at the water supply function, the role of the operations officer and standard terminology.
Hose Testing: It's completed for this year. This year we out-sourced this function. We have some lengths of 3 inch that have to be taken out of service. And some lengths of 5 inch that will need repair and possibly retirement.
Grant: We received a grant from the Narragansett One Foundation of $1200. This grant is for community risk reduction. We'll use this money for smoke & CO detectors and for "Stove Top Fire Stops".
USFA InfoGram: This weeks InfoGram from the USFA has some interesting articles. The two articles that caught my attention were volunteer recruitment and Identifying Elder Abuse. Neither are related topics, but both are important to our organization. EMR ISAC InfoGram
Call Volume: We've answered 339 calls for service since January 1st. Last year at this time we had run 245 calls.
ICS 300 & 400: York County EMA will be hosting both ICS 300 and 400 this month. A flyer is posted on the bulletin board. This training is free. Captains....if you haven't yet, you should seriously consider attending.
Zoll X-Series Cardiac Monitor Demo: A representative from Zoll will be here on Monday, June 8 at 1830 to give us a demonstration of the Zoll X-Series defibrillator. Provided it passes at town meetings, we will be buying two new defibs this year. We all seem to lean towards the Lifepak, but I think we'd be doing a disservice if we didn't look at what Zoll has to offer and compare the two machines. We're looking a spending nearly $60,000.00 on this project. I think it's important that we look at all options and make sure we're getting the best machine at the best price. I'm also going to schedule another night for a Lifepak 15 demo too.
HAZMAT IQ Class: West Kennebunk June 200th. This class shows a very good, common sense approach to Hazmat. Very much worth attending.
Call Force Payday: The May call force pay will be posted with the next regular payroll which will be June 19th.
Kittery Firefighter Seriously Injured; http://www.pressherald.com/2015/06/01/firefighter-seriously-injured-battling-kittery-house-fire/
Events Next Week: Monday 1830 Zoll Demo. Tuesday; 0800-2000 VOTE! Tuesday 1830; EMS training Pediatrics; Wednesday 0900 & 1830 Protocol Update Class, 1830 Alpha Co. Meeting. Thursday 1900 Dayton Town Meeting. Saturday 1100 Lyman Town Meeting.
Upcoming Training & Events: Rural Water Supply June 18 & 20 at GMFD. Firefighter II Academy graduation June 23, 1900 at Thornton Academy. June 30 Engine 83 commissioning ceremony.
Duty Officer: C8-9/Investigator Bilodeau.
I will be in Newport for reserves this weekend. I'll be out of town from Wednesday to Friday next week for the Navy. On June 6, 1942, a significant event in American history occurred. It changed the future of Naval warfare forever. What happened?
Have a safe weekend,
Chief
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Roger S. Hooper, Fire Chief
Goodwins Mills Fire-Rescue
481 Goodwins Mills Road
Lyman, ME 04002
Office: 207-499-7878
Station: 207-499-2362
Fax: 207-499-2893
www.gmfd.org
rhooper@gmfd.org
