Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department
Oglethorpe County, Northeast Georgia
Peace in Wolfskin

wolfskinvfd@yahoo.com


Mark Your Wolfskin VFD Calendar!
Send additions, corrections, etc. to wayne@sparkleberrysprings.com.
Please note that as of the beginning of 2015, Wayne's descriptions of training are accurate, but not official. For the official reports along with attendance please contact the new
Assistant Chief and Training Officer, Charleen Foott (foott@att.net).


May 2015

May 5: (Tue 7:00pm): First Tuesday Oglethorpe Firefighters Association meeting (Farm Bureau Office in Crawford).

May 7: (Thu 6:30pm): First Thursday Business Meeting.

May 14: (Thu 6:30pm): Second Thursday Training Meeting. Discussed response responsibilities and tactics, esp in terms of going directly to scene or station, eventually decided should go to station first except: two others have indicated they're headed there; and take a look at scene but only if on way or out of way by less than 1 minutes round trip. No more than 1 minute to check out scene. Also exemption for repeated false alarms from same residence over short period of time. Strongly suggested using number of fire depts called as indicator of potential seriousness.

May 16-17: (Sat/Sun): Firefighter Weekend. Charleen and Glenn left 5:30am on Saturday and returned 6:03pm on Sunday evening. Each took a 16-hour course. CF: Training Operations in Small Departments: This course is designed to provide students with some basic tools and skills to coordinate training in a small fire/EMS organization. A training function in a smaller department typically may include conducting training drills and coordinating training with a nearby larger city or state training function. Exam: Passed. GG: Principles and Practice of Command: This course will present principles and foundations for maintaining a command presence during emergency incidents. In addition, sie ujp, tactics, strategies, and effective communications will be discussed. No exam.

May 21: (Thu 6:30pm): Third Thursday Training Meeting. Thermal Imager was charged while pumper was run for 1 hour. Practiced using booster hose, PTO, and pump.

May 28: (Thu 6:30pm): Fourth Thursday Training Meeting. Chainsaw training: TM and MP went over prepping chainsaw with gas mix and oil, chain blade tightness, starting and safety measures, and fundamentals of cutting up medium diameter trees. (Phyllis arrived and took photos for newsletter, 30 minutes.)


June 2015

Jun 2: (Tue 7:00pm): First Tuesday Oglethorpe Firefighters Association meeting (Farm Bureau Office in Crawford).

NOTE: Jun 3: (Wed 6:30pm): Business Meeting. Changed to Wed night Jun 3 because of unexpected difficulties with attendance on Thu Jun 4 by several members. Sorry! This happens very infrequently.

Jun 6: (Sat 9:00am): County wide training - Search and Rescue. 1096 Elberton Road. See OCFFA Description for details and contact info.

NOTE: Jun 11: (Thu 6:30pm): NOTE: Postponed to 6:30pm Friday Jun 12. Second Thursday Training Meeting. We'll be looking over SalemVFD's brush truck. Sorry about the late notification.

Jun 18: (Thu 6:30pm): Third Thursday Training Meeting.

Jun 25: (Thu 6:30pm): Fourth Thursday Training Meeting.


July 2015

Jul 2: (Thu 6:30pm): First Thursday Business Meeting.


Sunday, October 30, 2005

The Tanker/Pumper Fund 2005

Yes, another fundraiser! But unlike some, The Tanker Fund 2005 has a particular and very worthwhile goal. It is to pay the community matching funds for the Supertanker/Pumper, 95% of the cost being paid by FEMA in 2005 (see Links in the sidebar).

We mailed a letter (see Links in the sidebar) to all households in our Fire Protection District that detailed our work to improve our Fire Protection from ISO Class 9 to Class 8. If you were missed, please consider making a donation. More details on why and how to do this are at the top of the front page.

Thanks for everyone's help!
-Glenn

Friday, October 28, 2005

Some Home Pics for Jon

Jon Huff, who's in Louisiana volunteering for the relief effort as he has been for the last month, asked us to post some pics of WVFD, so he could show them around. Jon's our guy; how could we not help him out? However, we miss him and we want him home, too.

The below two pics are the front of WVFD, located along Wolfskin Road. We do the best we can! The elegant lemon-yellow pumper is a generous loan from Oconee County VFD, who has been very good to us indeed. Jon drives this truck like a pro. Well, he is a pro. In the pic below, that's Louis and Ed, our training officers, and I believe Dave on the far right.



Not sure who that is going into the building but I do believe that's Jon peering into his truck.


What would we do without Frankie? It would be a hard life at WVFD. He maintains the firetrucks, and most of the station. Here he shows his best side.


Inside the station, we have some of the folks who make it what it is. What with helmets and backsides, I'm not sure who everyone is.


Phyllis, our fire chief, and Glenn confer about something we need not know.


And finally, Phyllis in her glory as Southern Lady of the Year. Oh yeah, that's Phyllis on the right.


What can I say? These are our people, and we're proud of them.

-Wayne

Sunday, October 23, 2005

FEMA Grant Proposals added to Links

Copies of our FEMA Grant Proposals for 2004 and 2005 have been added to the Link section in the right sidebar. They are each 150-200 kb in .pdf format. The 2004 award provided money for new Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and small equipment and the 2005 award provided money for a new Tanker/Pumper.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Our Chief, Our Firefighters, and Our Department

I should tell you about our Fire Chief at Wolfskin VFD - Phyllis Jackson. She’s been involved with the fire department for at least twenty-five years, longer than we’ve been here. There’s no better chief - she’s excited about everything, very persuasive about getting other people involved and doing things (like this), and somehow able to push people onwards simply on the basis of optimism. AND, she’s unintrusive, which is perhaps the most remarkable quality in combination of all those other things. Phyllis came down for the Firefighters’ Weekend in Forsyth, GA, April 1-3, 2005 in the role of a Safety Officer, and we met at breakfast, lunch and dinner to discuss what was happening and to get psyched and so forth, and that’s Phyllis for you. I heard more than once people in other fire departments at nearby tables say something like “Oh yeah, everyone likes Wolfskin”, and I’ve no doubt that among all the reasons for that, Phyllis is at the top of the list.

Oh yeah, and I have to mention this - at dinner one night at the Fire Academy, I looked at Phyllis and asked Glenn, “Do you feel like we’re sharing the table with Shirley MacLaine?” Glenn said, “I’ve always felt that way." If you have an impression of Shirley MacLaine, then that’s Phyllis, except more up.

Some of us have suggested that the motto of the Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department should include something like ‘The Progressive Fire Department’ which in some strange way might go nicely with our logo of a red wolf in full leap before a full moon. Many of you know first hand the problems that can arise in small volunteer organizations: too many egos, not enough constructive modesty. Our department went through at least one such cycle, but it has been reborn Phoenix-like with the return of older members like Glenn and myself and with lots of new members. More than one live outside Wolfskin and have cycled through several fire departments, much like churches, before finding their home at WVFD. In their words, they ‘fit in’ with Wolfskin. There are members from the community who do not fight fires but are still heavily involved in the future of the department. I think ‘progressive’ best describes our and other groups in which diverse folks are able to work together to accomplish a common goal: progress. No common background, religion, or politics define the group or its methods, but rather the group is defined by an understanding that none of these are important and none should block progress toward the common goal.

Wish the rest of the world worked this way.

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

When Your Propane Tank Catches Fire: Training at the Firefighters’ Weekend, April 3, 2005

There are large propane tanks next to many homes in Wolfskin and, at our borders, several propane tank farms and lots of traffic in this and other pressurized, flammable gasses on Highway 78. Hopefully, we will never see a tank on fire, but the Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department trains for such an event.

During the last day of the Firefighters’ Weekend in Forsyth, GA, April 3, 2005, there was a course in Pressurized Container Fire Control. The objectives: preventing liquid propane/butane tanks from exploding from a BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion), and more importantly, knowing when it is safer for firefighters to back way off and let the tank explode. Better to be around to deal with the aftermath of an explosion than to be lost vainly trying to prevent it. Ed Frey, Jon Huff, and Ben Johnson came from Wolfskin to attend the class. The morning was lecture and exam and the afternoon was live practice. The objectives for the afternoon were not well defined in the morning class, but it was clear that teams of about 10-14 of the students were to advance in formation into a hell-fire with only their two water streams to protect them so that one of them could turn off a valve to stop the liquid propane from feeding the fire. The simulated tank could not BLEVE, but it would be frightful none-the-less. Virtually the same method was used by Red Adair decades ago in putting out oil-well and gas-well fires.

The twenty-five or so students were nervous in the afternoon, having to don full Personal Protective Equipment, including SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus), and not knowing exactly what was going to happen. The instructors had told the students to check out each other’s equipment but they were each so involved in trying to get their own gear straight. I am not able to do all this physical activity, so I tried to help some other students getting into their gear and checking straps, air cylinder connections, and making sure that collars and gloves protected everything. Many firefighters were from small departments with hand-me-down equipment and turn-out gear with which they were not that familiar. There were at least six different models of SCBA equipment among them and there were the usual problems with face masks and air supplies, but there was someone who knew about each model and the problems were solved. I was also nervous, thinking the instructors were off the mark and that trouble was ahead.

The live fires went well, though. Team work immediately solidified and about nine cycles of burn and turnoff went without a problem as students each rotated through the several positions on the team. There was at least one safety officer, three staff on a safety water stream, three instructors shoulder to shoulder with the students and staff controlling the propane. Because of a strong wind, they started out with a small fire but were able to increase it until its flames were about 60 feet high. It was a spectacular affair and a great confidence-building experience.

As with many things for which we train, we hope never to have to do it for real.

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

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).

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Long-Delayed Update

Apologies for the lack of posting in the last two weeks.

A lot of internal work has been going on in gearing up for fundraising for the tanker pictured at the upper right. We have to raise $8500 to match the grant we succeeded in obtaining, and it has to be done by November 10th. Please contact WVFD Chief Phyllis Jackson if you'd like to contribute or have questions.

There is an exciting presentation by Atlanta Fire Chief Dennis Rubin on October 20th at 7pm. From Phyllis:

Oconee County Fire Symposium, Thursday, October 20. 7-9 pm, Oconee Co Civic Center. (2661 Hog Mtn Rd). Atlanta Fire Chief Dennis Rubin speaking. Topic is “Old Problems: New Solutions.” Bruce Thaxton, Oconee Fire Chief has graciously invited us. We must make reservations for seating, so e-mail back by Friday, October 14.

***Consider your arms twisted on this, and make an effort, FF and Friendst***

Info on Chief Rubin: He has been in the fire service 31 yrs, currently enrolled in Oklahoma State Univ (the IFSTA publications folks) grad school, is a contributing editor of Firehouse Magazine, instructor at National Fire Academy for 22 yrs.

On way or another, save that October 20th date for WVFD. It’s our training night, anyhow!


-Wayne

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Business Meeting Thu Oct 6 7pm

Subject line tells it all. I don't know what the agenda will be, but don't miss this one!

(Phyllis, I think it's fine to copy/paste the agenda if you want to, or if you want me to.)

-Wayne