Fire Department

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Annual Report

It is my pleasure as your Fire Chief to present to you the Cascade Charter Township Fire Department 2003 Annual Fire Report. I am proud to serve as your Fire Chief and continue to be proud of my employees.

2003 was a record year for your fire department. Our annual call volume was the highest it has ever been; at 1252 responses, we saw a 7% increase from last year. The majority of our responses are medicals. Responding to medical calls is very important to our residents due to our quick response and our ability to provide basic life support.

In 2004 we will be continuing to work on updating our operating procedures. This is a long and time-consuming process. We are redoing all of our procedures to make sure they compliment with the township manual as well as all required laws that are mandated by the state. We want to make sure we have all of the procedures needed to operate our department in the most effective way we can.

I have increased the number of meetings with my staff. We are having Officer, Fulltime and Paid On Call employee meetings every other month. This will keep the lines of communication open for all personnel so issues can be resolved quickly.

We are in the process of updating our training policy. This will give us more up to date trainings and make sure our program deals with the required trainings from the state. This will continue into 2004 to make sure our employees have the most up to date training and to make our department the best that we can.

Community Programs

This year was another great year for our community programs. We were involved in the "Safe at Home" program again this year. This program is targeted at school age children and we teach them about fire safety. In 2003 we spent numerous hours in the schools teaching the program to third and first graders. This was another big success for the department and for the schools. We heard a lot of good comments from the school on how the program was presented and the kids are learning a lot about fire safety from the program.

We conducted 18 CPR training classes for the community in 2003. It has been a very popular program for businesses and residents within the township. This is a very important class and we hope someday everyone in the township will know CPR. We are currently advocating and advertising this program and making the program available to all residents and businesses.

Our on site program was another big success. We visited Meijer, Wal-Mart, Prevo's, Dickenson Press and D&W. Fore the year we had 905 citizens and business people stop by and receive information and fire safety and have their blood pressures checked.

We are continually looking for new programs, and how to make our current programs better.

Training

This is an important part of our job. Last year we were fortunate enough to get a house donated for us to use. We used the house to make it as realistic as possible to the conditions we will encounter at a house fire. We used our smoke machine to fill the house with smoke for search and rescue training. We also have room fires set in the house so each firefighter will be able to feel the heat when fighting an uncontrolled fire. This is done with all of the required safety measures in place so that we have no injuries. We increased the number of our trainings so we could get more use out of the training house.

As in the past, we had trainings with our neighboring departments so we can work together better. We do have mutual aid calls and this gives us a better working relationship with the departments when we respond with them and when we call them in for assistance.

Some of the trainings we did this year were: Firefighter Rescue, Building Construction, Ladders, Ventilation, Hydrant Hook-ups, Drafting from Port-a-Tank and Standard Rural Hook-up for non hydrant areas. This is not an all-inclusive list, but just some of the trainings we conducted.

Fire Prevention

Inspector Korhorn conducted 298 fire inspections in 2003. Pre Incident surveys were also updated as buildings were inspected and as new buildings were built. Of the 66 fires we had in 2003, Inspector Korhorn spent numerous hours investigating the cause and origin of these fires. Inspector Korhorn was also asked to respond to Ada Township to investigate the cause and origin of three (3) of their structure fires. We responded to three (3) structure fires that were intentionally set. Currently, a resident is being charged with arson in one of those cases. Other duties of Inspector Korhorn are to review site plans for new buildings and plats, attend meetings with developers, attend site plan review committees, and attend Planning Commission meetings. Inspector Korhorn has kept his inspector certification updated throughout the year by attending trainings sponsored by local and state agencies.

Apparatus

Personnel

Our department consists of one (1) full-time Fire Chief; one (1) Paid On Call Deputy Chief, one (1) full-time Fire Inspector, eleven (11) full-time suppression firefighters and 20 paid on call firefighters. Our full-time firefighters are divided into three (3) shifts consisting of four (4) personnel on two (2) shifts and three (3) personnel on one shift.

Hired seven (7) paid on call this year. This was a big step for us to increase our paid on call staff so we have additional personnel to back up our full time staff.

A list of department employees is listed below according to their original hire date.

Statistics

In 2003 we responded to 116 fires. These include structure fires, outside of structure fires, dumpster fires, etc. We saved a total value of $59,832,130 and had a loss of $1,207,783.

Fire Calls Number   Fire Alarms 141   Aircraft Alerts 8   CO Alarms 23   Service Calls 58   Fires 116   Grass Fires 13   Hazardous Incidents 10   Illegal Burn 32   Lock Out 19     Medical 608     Gas Leak 9     Personal Injury Accident 99     Stand By 2     Trees Down 13     Unknown Accidents 25     Vehicle Fires 17     Wires Down 59     Total 1,252

Years in Comparison

Year Total Fire Calls 1995 946 1996 946 1997 986 1998 1,077 1999 1,199 2000 1,207 2001 1,123 2002 1,172 2003 1,252

Programs

Listed below are some of the programs and activities we did this past year. We do more then just respond to fires and medicals. We are committed to the community and want to offer programs that will teach them about fire safety.

CPR classes
Child car seat inspections
Home fire Inspections
Pre-school fire safety talks
Safe at home fire safety to the schools
Fire drills
Fire prevention talks
Association board meetings
Neighborhood association groups
Local business programs
Block parties
Birthday parties
Boy/Girl scout talks and tours
Forest Hills school tailgate party
Annual Halloween Community safe candy party

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This page last modified 06/08/04.
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