Toward Class 8 Fire Protection: Training at the Firefighters’ Weekend, April 1-3, 2005

Wolfskin’s goal is to go from ISO Fire Protection Class 9 to Class 8 within two years. This would save each homeowner about 25-30% every year on their home insurance, and the fire protection would be a lot better. If we can purchase a large tanker (we have!), Wolfskin might be able to do it by itself, but it is more likely that Wolfskin and the adjoining Arnoldsville and Devil’s Pond Fire Departments, with whom we have automatic aid, can reach Class 8 together as a unit by continuing to share resources, in particular a new tanker. The entire county with its thirteen independent Volunteer Fire Departments might remotely be able to do it as a unit. Remotely because some Oglethorpe Fire Departments are rumored to be stuck in the early part of the last century when men were men and women, children, and dogs were, at best, ignored.

March, 2005: Along with several firefighters from the county, Glenn Galau attended a 2-day course held at the Oglethorpe Rescue Building on how to submit fire reports through the State to the National Database, NIFRA (yes, 16 hours to learn the basics!). It is clear that records of apparatus and persons responding to each alarm are very important in documenting the capabilities of the fire department. This is for grant proposals, pleading to the County Commisioners for return to the fire deparments of more of the tax on home insurance premiums that County collects every year, and in attempting to decrease these insurance premiums for the district’s homeowners by lowering the Fire Protection Class Rating determined by the ISO (Insurance Services Organization). If it is not written down, it does not exist. How often we have heard this, and have said it ourselves.

April 3, 2005: Just got back from Firefighters' Weekend in Forsyth, GA. The Fire Academy is a part of the Georgia Public Service Training Center, which also includes EMS, Police, and a host of other similar-type agencies. It’s an enormous campus, situated in rural east-central Georgia. You don’t go wandering, otherwise you might end up too close to the minimum security prison or in the bombing range. It probably wouldn’t be good to get too close to the pressurized container firefighting course either!

It was quite a weekend: supposedly 700 firefighters were there from all over north Georgia, classes going on everywhere, not much of a minute wasted. A bit of a military aspect to it - no alcohol on premises, stuff like that, but part of it is because the inmates at the minimum security prison do most of the work and the regulations say to keep stuff out of their reach. In fact, the inmates run their own firehouse. It was impressive overall.

The first two days for Glenn at the Fire Academy was a course about ISO ratings. To boil down pages and pages of definitions, allowances, creditable items, equivalencies, obscure marginalia and formulae learned this weekend, it is records, records, records. Pump tests, hose tests, hydrant tests (the only reason to be thankful that we don’t have hydrants!); training records, driver certifications, legal agreements concerning automatic first-alarm aid; VIN, insurance company and policy number for each truck, and lots more. It takes firefighters, reliable equipment and money to support the claims of firefighters, material and capabilities that are shown to the ISO field inspectors during their three-day inspection of the department and the 911 facility.

For Class 8, Wolfskin needed some folks who knew how to test pumps and do the calculations for layouts of firehoses and pump pressures, so Wayne Hughes took these two courses at the Firefighters’ Weekend. Wayne ended up with an 8-hour certificate in pump testing and a 16-hour certificate in Practical Fireground Hydraulics. WVFD Chief Phyllis Jackson, one of the many Safety Officers overseeing the training during the weekend, joined Wayne in the Pump Testing Course. Indeed, she got him into the course although it was full and she even made sure he got a certificate. It was cold, wet, windy and rainy during the training on Friday, but they had a great time outside pumping thousands of gallons of water while testing the firetruck’s pump. Their two or three decade-old turnout gear was a sad sight among the slick new gear (now called Personal Protective Equipment, PPE) worn by the paid professional firefighters who were taking the course. Even so, the professionals were really nice about it and hardly laughed at them. HOWEVER, Phyllis wrote a $109 K grant proposal last year, got it funded, and it means new PPE for Wolfskin sometime late this year. We expect envy instead of laughs when Wolfskin firefighters show up at Forsyth for training NEXT year.

(This was first published in different forms on Niches and in the Oglethorpe Echo).