Fire Department update - City Council Strategic Planning Workshop 5-31-22

[0:00:00] so let's focus on 2021 some of our accomplishments ladder seven purchased in the tail end of 2020 placed into service in 2021 ladder 7 provides aerial support to the southwest sector of our city and if y'all familiar we had an apartment fire and this engine was the first one on scene so very effective so we implemented a new health and fitness initiative we purchased about 10 concept 2 rowers and if y'all have ever seen those it is a very cardio based and it's a total total body workout and we purchased this equipment established a mandatory printed training program and then we created the annual pt test kind of modeled after the dps system it's a percentage based on your age your body weight your height and our goal our target goal we set a baseline for all of our employees we tested the entire department set a baseline and now our new target goal is 70 of vo vo2 max and there's a whole bunch of science into that but uh 70 means that you you're in very good shape based on your age and your body composition and whether you are fit for duty basically so i'm not going to tell you my score so tiffany's capabilities uh tiffany's texas intra state firefighter mutual aid system so there's two parts why this is a great program to be part of first it's a great being a great neighbor whenever there's any departments across the state of texas that need resources for a catastrophic catastrophic event or wildfire they submit a request form through the tiffmas program they reach out to other departments that can lend resources we respond and our city our employees and our city will get compensated for that accordingly based on what is sent out we increased our capabilities last year

[0:02:02] we had about two engine bosses and that's equivalent to like an officer on an engine they command one or or they command two to three personnel and then we had about 20 participants that met the requirements for tiffmas we've increased that to a strike team leader one strike team leader trainee who is almost completed he will take a group of five resources with five engine bosses and five total crews and they'll run an entire sector of a fire we've increased our two engine bosses up to six engine bosses and 40 deplorable team members and this first the last three months of this year we've been very active in the tiffman's program we had units up in wichita falls where our strike team leader went to wichita falls and ran an entire division up there we had when they finished in wichita falls they moved down to the abilene fire i'm sure all of y'all saw over the news we had units there on the ground making an impact in our state we sent units down to the sonora area called it's a wpu program wildland paramedic unit they were down there to provide support for other tiffmas units that were there but they provided the medical side of it anyways and a brand new program called the rim team rapid extrication module these are going to be required on every type one fire event in the state of texas and there are only two rem teams in the state of texas and we are one of them so any type one incident we're going to get called on that uh type one incident so like abilene was a type one incident and um it's a big incident that they're bringing in federal units for so um deployments uh we had one deployment in california and six across the state of texas as of when i created this powerpoint now we've got about nine deployments across the state of texas right now um i'm looking very forward to what uh tiffmas develops into in the future

[0:04:06] one of the benefits is whatever unit that we send we get paid for that daily actually we get paid for that hourly in this very short period of time not only do you recapture the cost of that unit you're also putting money in the bank to purchase another unit and you know i think it's really important that this time of year when we're sitting around talking about budget that we're not sitting around with our hand out like i need more to run my organization i need more to run my department that we start exploring different avenues where our department can generate our own revenue now to supplement our budget and this stiffness program is absolutely one of those resources one of those programs to help us supplement and um move into the future and get state of the art equipment that maybe wouldn't be available without this program or training academy they've done some pretty neat stuff over there this year um they've hosted two regional area schools for a local volunteer community and i find this be to be very very important we have 16 m volunteer organizations that surround the city of san angelo and i don't believe a firefighter their worth is based on whether they receive a paycheck or not so i am very motivated to reach out to our volunteer community find out what needs they have help facilitate those needs we have a four million dollar training academy i would love for our volunteer community to come in share that facility with us we can all learn from each other and move into the future and maybe host statewide training at this at our at our new facility we hosted two national fire academy courses and the national fire academy is up in emmitsburg we can send firefighters up there for training or we can bring an instructor down here and train the entire region at a localized area and it doesn't cost our city a dime to bring this train in here and then our local personnel get the national training so we hosted two of those courses and i went to one of them it was actually fascinating so we started negotiations with teaks i

[0:06:11] don't know if you all know what that is texas engineering extension they are affiliated with texas a m we've started negotiations with their command staff to potentially form an agreement for their annual fire school so texas a m is landlocked they have they cannot accept any more students for their annual school what chief dunn had kind of said in a vision out for years ago is a partnership with teks there are overflow students coming to san angelo and living here for three months food on a plate and head in a bed and these cadets running through our fire academy and they would pay us for that again here's another revenue source so it's very important to me to move forward with this teks agreement because it's a generating a revenue generating format for us and then of course the picture in the background i couldn't help myself i had to put that in there so that is a metal car that we set on fire and it's got a propane system underneath it and that is one of the requirements teex has certain check boxes that they have to meet and one of the areas that we didn't have was one of these car fire trainers and the pitcher up above is a propane tank trainer teex is very specific with the curriculum that we have to meet so that car trainer was instrumental in moving us forward for that looks very realistic it actually so what's really neat and i don't want to brag too much but that car trainer is fifty thousand dollars we did not pay fifty thousand dollars for it because i'm an incredibly talented member of our department that is a welder and this the the plan came to me a couple years ago and i said we need a car trainer we've got to have one when i was over the training academy at the battalion chief whether we need a car trainer started pricing it the the burner system the propane pilot system is 25 000 and that i don't want the liability of building that because if something goes wrong and

[0:08:15] it points back that there was a problem with that propane prop i didn't i didn't want the city or myself to have that liability to build that now the metal car is just bent and welded metal but let's go back you see the wheels see that that is so cool our one of our firefighters he cut those fire axes out of there all these doors actually function the hood is counterweighted so when you do lift it it's not the full plate steel that you're lifting up you can't see the front of it but the headlights used to be one of the tactics that you bust bust out the headlight to access an engine compartment fire but like i said one of our guys built this for 7 000 instead of 25. so anyways had to brag a little bit so engine replacement we actually secured the funding for two new engines in 2021 uh engine 5 actually was at the very beginning of this year so engine 5 and engine 3 are set to be replaced uh they are due to begin production in april of 23 with completion of june of 23. it takes a really long time to build a fire truck so our focus moving into the future is finalize this partnership with teks i told you why i'm so passionate about that it's a huge revenue source for our city and for our department i want to start with the basic fire academy and then see where that goes from there would like to to have a discussion on securing funding for um to complete our firefighter bunker gear project so the nfpa national fire protection agency has set out a standard that every firefighter should have two sets of bunker gear currently we have about 50 percent of our department that has two sets the nfpa has not made this a mandate and the texas fire commission has not adopted it so at this point it is still a you should rather than you shall so we chief dunn saw the writing on the wall this is going to turn into an

[0:10:17] unfunded mandate and we need to get ahead of it before we have to buy 180 sets of gear right now so like i said we've got about 50 percent of the apartment in two sets in order to complete the project we would need about 90 sets at about 3 000 a set so about 270 000 a fire truck replacement program currently and we receive about 250 000 a year for capital allocation we cash flow our fire trucks and when that was originally established a fire truck cost about 250 to 300 000. now they're about 750 to 800 thousand so at the minimum it's taking three to three and a half year three to four years to get enough funding to purchase one fire truck and there's ten fire trucks that's a thirty year replacement and back to the nfpa they recommended 10-year replacement on an engine and a 15-year replacement on a ladder truck because of our maintenance program and our lower call volume we were able to push that a little bit and uh pushed the engine replacement to a 15 and the latter replacement to to a 20 but with the current allocation it was just just making it very difficult to stay on track with this replacement program so uh cosa dc talked to you all about interstate 14 27 the railroad lots of activity coming to san angelo which is going to mean population boost and trying to get ahead of the issue because it takes a while to build a fire station i kind of forecast in the next 10 years we're going to need two more fire stations minimum two more fire stations so now is the time to start looking for land and potentially trying to find funding resources to purchase this land and they're not making any more of it

[0:12:19] and the price keeps going up so um and then expansion at the training center this teks program we need another classroom right now it's pretty pretty jam-packed out there as far as classroom sizes and facility sizes we would like to have about a 7 000 square foot training room training classroom only and then of course the arf trainer the aircraft trainer that is a long-term goal if we can get an aircraft trainer at that facility dfw charges five thousand dollars per student just to go to through their trainer now this aircraft trainer comes with a pretty hefty price tag but uh you know shane talked about grants grants grants grants there are a lot of grants out there and unfortunately no it's not unfortunate it's actually a good thing but a lot of the volunteer community gets gets most of those grants of course they don't have a steady income stream um in the last year and a half two years uh chief fisher and myself have applied for four grants and we've not gotten a single one of them but we're not going to stop trying because the money's out there we're just going to keep asking and this aircraft trainer the only way we're going to be successful and actually turn a profit and is if it's funded through a grant so we're continuously looking for an aircraft trainer grant so we can move forward with that program as well you have any questions for me no i think your focus for 2023 is probably far more aggressive than there's available funds so i think you need to get some priorities established yes ma'am i i do have some priorities established on that of the things that um absolutely need to happen some things that should happen and things that would be nice to happen so questions for cheap brody thank you very much and thank you for waiting around all day long as well we hope you enjoyed learning more about

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Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=lQv_ZwTkx00