HomeMy WebLinkAboutFire Department Annual Report 2008.PDF CAYUG'FA i—IEIGHTS
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ANNUAL REPORT
2008
C'AYUGA HEIGHTS FIRE� b'e RE DEPARTMENT
194 Pleasant Grove ®ad
19 �. 55
- r\ Ithaca, NY 148.50
E,GN�S1 (607) 257-2377
March 10, 2009
Mayor James Gilmore and the
Board of Trustees for the Village of Cayuga Heights
The following is the Annual Report of the Cayuga Heights Fire Department for 2008.
The volunteers of the Cayuga Heights Fire Department had a very busy year in 2008with
a total of 542 calls. There were 299 runs in the Village of Cayuga Heights, 175 runs in
the Town of Ithaca and we responded to 68 requests for mutual aid. We were down 14
calls from 2007 but last year we responded to 122 mutual aid calls because of the closure
of the Thurston Ave. Bridge. There were 4 structure fire calls, 22 motor vehicle crashes,
254 EMS calls and 262 other type incidents. "Other type incidents" fall into the category
of calls such as car fires, fire alarm activations, power lines down, flooded basements,
brush fires, spills, cooking fires etc... The highest percentage of calls that we run
continue to be emergency medical requests. The Cayuga Heights Fire Department
provides excellent and timely service to our district. We have been able to respond to
every fire call that we have been dispatched to and with very few exceptions we are able
to respond to all EMS alarms as well. Every once in a while we will have an EMS call
and have no EMT available to respond. In these instances we will have a firefighter at
the station contact to responding ambulance to let them know that we have personnel
available to respond if needed. Every firefighter in this department is CPR/AED
certified. We are very proud of our ability to have personnel ready to respond to every
call we are dispatched to. Two of our structure fire incidents were stopped while the fires
were small. In March we were dispatched to a residence where painters were using a
heat gun to strip paint from a building. The wood siding on the house caught fire from
misuse of the heat gun causing fire extension into the wall of the home. Our firefighter's
rapid response allowed us to get water on the fire quickly and stop the spread of the fire
quickly. The second structure fire was in August. The department responded to a
reported kitchen fire on Warren Road in an apartment. First arriving units found a heavy
smoke condition in an apartment caused by a fire on the stove. A neighbor had knocked
down most of the fire prior to our arrival but we did overhaul the area to ensure that there
was no extension of the fire and did an investigation, The other two fires that were
classified at structure fires were a cooking fire that was contained to the stove and a
chimney fire that was extinguished with little damage to the home. As stated many times
before, the rapid response of the volunteers of the Cayuga Heights Fire Department keeps
"HELP PREVENT FIRES„
these small fires contained before they get out of control. We do continue to be an asset
that our neighboring departments use regularly with mutual aid assignments. Many times
our firefighters are involved directly with fire attack at mutual aid fires. Our members
are very well trained, disciplined and in great physical condition which allows us to
perform well during interior operations. We are happy to respond to these requests for
help because we know that when we have a major incident our neighboring departments
will be there to help us.
In 2008 we had an average response time of 3.3 minutes with an average of 9.3
firefighters per call. Our average call length was 20.5 minutes per call with a total of
3028.32 man hours out on calls for 2008. As stated in previous years reports, the man
hour total only includes the time spent on the call and does not cover the amount of time
spent cleaning our equipment after each call to put it back in service. This number also
does not cover all the time spent by department members maintaining equipment,
cleaning trucks, maintaining and cleaning the fire station, mowing lawns in the summer
and clearing snow in the winter. The members of the Cayuga Heights Fire Department
are very proud of our equipment and our station and work very hard to keep everything in
top condition.
In 2008 the department responded to 254 EMS calls. EMS calls count for our greatest
percentage of responses. Our dedicated EMTs are second to none in this county in my
opinion. We have 16 Basic EMTs, 1 EMT Intermediate, 2 EMT-CC and 3 Paramedics.
We currently have 4 EMTs enrolled in the Paramedic Program in Elmira. We continue to
provide ALS first response to our district. Our EMS coverage is one of the most amazing
aspects of this department. These calls are some of our most important runs but often go
unheralded. It is very easy to see three large yellow fire trucks with lights flashing on the
side of the road, often there to reset a fire alarm system that has malfunctioned. Less
noticeable is the rescue truck which responds, many times, without lights flashing and
siren wailing to a home where somebody is sick and in:need of medical care. Often there
are two or three EMTs helping this person and supporting family members until the
ambulance arrives and transports the person to the hospital. The truck sits in the
driveway or on the side of the road and nobody is even aware that there is an emergency.
The EMS side of our operation is overlooked often but is the service that we provide
most often.
In 2008 we had 52 in house trainings at the fire department. We had an average of 15
people at each training and a total of 1,997 man hours of in house training taken at the
department. These trainings are done either at the fire station or the county training
facility in the city. These trainings are put together by-the officers of the department and
taught by us. We also had 1,815 hours of State and National level trainings taken by
members of the department. All new members of the; department are required to take
either Scene Support Operations (27 hours) or Firefighter 1 (78 hours) and ICS (Incident
Command System) Level 700 and 800 within their first year in the department. These
numbers do not include the countless hours of continuing education that each EMT must
take. Basic EMTs are required to take 12 hours of continuing education each year and
Paramedics are required to take 24 hours each year. Each EMS provider has to recertify
every three years as well. This requires the individual to take a refresher class that covers
many hours of core topics. These trainings are done on nights and weekends.
There are currently 46 members of the fire department and 10 members of the fire
company support staff for a current roster of 56 members. All of our members are
currently active. We do a status review of our membership rolls twice a year to ensure
that every person in the department is current on their call and training requirements. At
this time we have 24 interior firefighters, 17 exterior firefighters 5 probationary members.
In 2008 we had two recruit classes, one in the spring and one in the fall. We accepted 28
new members into the department/company. We have retained 18 of these members.
Our recruits join with the best of intentions after a serious interview process with the
department and company officers. At times the new recruits do not realize, even after
numerous information sessions, that joining the fire department requires a major
commitment of time. We do not like the attrition but we do expect some. The members
we retain usually end up being very dedicated to the department and when they leave our
department, many times, they join volunteer departments in their new towns.
Several projects were started and completed at the station in 2008. A major hurdle to
communications was conquered this year with the implementation of the 800MgHz radio
system. We have new mobile (vehicle based) radios in every truck as well as new
portables. We now have a portable radio for every seat in the heavy apparatus. This
allows every firefighter entering a dangerous environment to have instant
communications on the fire ground. This makes our job much safer. Around the station
we made a couple of improvements as well this year. With support of the fire company
we purchased a new floor for the gym at the station. We did all the work on this project
with manpower from the department. We pulled up the old carpet and laid down the new
rubberized floor over a weekend in July. The new floor is much easier to keep clean and
looks better and is more functional then the carpet that was there before. We also
replaced the carpet in the company room with tile. Again this project was funded with
money from the fire company. The new the floor is much easier to maintain in this high
traffic area. We have continued to have problems with the boiler room at the station but
we are in the process of working with a plumbing contractor and Brent Cross to come up
with a permanent solution for the heat and hot water issues at the station.
We at the fire station do not only contribute to our community by responding to
emergencies. Our members are very active with many projects in the community that
start at the fire station. Fire Prevention in our elementary schools and area pre schools
continues to be a priority for us. We receive requests for visits to schools throughout the
year. We visit Cayuga Heights Elementary School and Northeast Elementary during fire
prevention week in the fall. During the year we receive requests to either open the station
for young children or to have firefighters go out to preschools to visit children. Fire
Prevention is one of our most important functions. If we can keep children aware of the
hazards of fire then we help keep our community safer. It seems as if every weekend we
host a group of young children at the station for birthday parties. This program started
with one party several years ago and has blossomed into something many children look
forward to for their birthdays. Mart MacDougal has taken this program on and does a
a a
great job with it. The children have a lot of fun having a party at the fire station that they
will never forget and some times we gain adult members from the parents attending. We
held our First Annual Community Yard sale last May and it was an amazing weekend.
All members of the department contributed time to this project led by Lt. Dave
Openshaw, We collected items for sale the month prior to the yard sale and when the
weekend arrived we had crowds lined up. We truly appreciated the donations to the yard
sale from the community and all the time and effort that the members put in to make this
event work. We look forward to making this an annual tradition at the station. We still
have many organizations that use the station for meetings. These organizations include
the local bridge club, the Guiding Eyes for the Blind, Ithaca Girls Hockey, the Ithaca
Ballet, Ithaca Doll Artists, Ithaca Garden Club and the Ithaca Women's Club. The
station is very much a part of this community.
We continue with a strong bunking program. All seven bunker rooms are full at this
time. The bunkers keep up with day to day cleaning and maintenance of the fire station
and the fire trucks, These men and women provide an amazing service to this
community. Much of the credit for our rapid response in the middle of the night goes to
the dedicated bunkers of the department.
We at the fire department are dedicated to our mission of providing a very high level of
fire and EMS protection to our community. The officers and firefighters of the Cayuga
Heights Fire Department are proud of our accomplishments over the past year and look
forward to improving our services in the coming year. We again would like to thank the
village board for the support that you have given us this past year. Without the support of
the Village of Cayuga Heights and the Town of Ithaca our mission would be impossible.
Thank You.
/rge
,
amborelle
f/Superintendent
Fire Department:55002
Cayuga Heights Fire Department Companies:All
Date Range:From 01/01/2008 to 12/31/2008
Box/Zone/Code:All
District:All
Incident Totals by Time of Day Situation Found:All
Exclude Mutual Aids:No
Exclude Exposures:No
Time of Day Call Avg
Count Attend
00:00 -00:59 ,t 13 8.5
01:00 - 01:59 n
19 10.4
02:00 -02:59 _ 5 8.6
03:00 -03:59 _�� 12 6.7
04:00 - 04:59
_ — 11 7.0
05:00 - 05:59 _ __ 7 9.4
06:00 - 06:59 13 9.0
07:00 - 07:59 4 _ 16 8.6
08:00 - 08:59 35 7.4
09:00 - 09:59 ! 33 8.2
10:00 - 10:59 _ 31 7.5
11:00 - 11:59 36 7.0
12:00 - 12:59 --- -_- -- - w—;
33 8.2
13:00 - 13:59 25 8.3
14:00 - 14:59 36 8.0
-15:00 - 15:59 - - -- �
_------_- :_ 27 9.6
16:00 - 16:59 38 11.5
1-7:00 - 17:59 34 12.2
1.8:00 - 18:59 -- - -�
-— - --- --- 19 11.9
19:00 - 19:59 24 12.1
20:00 - 20:59 — P
18 13.9
21:00 - 21:59 i- 23 13.9
22:00 - 22:59 13 12.6
2.3:00 -23:59 21 10.0
Date: 03/06/2009 Page: 1 Time: 11:35 AM
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Fire Department:55002
Cayuga Heights Fire Department Companies:All
Date Range:From 01/01/2008 to 12/31/2008
Box/Zone/Code:All
District:All
Incident Reponse Performance Analysis Situation Found:All
Exclude Mutual Aids:No
Exclude Exposures:No
Response Time
Response Time
(Minutes) Number of Incidents Totals Additional
0 1 81 Longest Time: 17.0
2 3 248 Incident#: 2008-080147
4 5 111
Average Time: 3.3
6_7 39
8 9 19
>10 12
Apparatus Travel Time
Travel Time
(Minutes) Number of Incidents Totals Additional
0 4xx 423
Longest Time: 30.0
5 9 76 Incident#: 2008-080147
10-14 7
Average Time: 3.3
15-19 3
20-24 0
>25 1
Incident Length
Incident Length
(Minutes) Number of Incidents Totals Additional
0-29 442 Longest Time: 368.0
30-59 37 Incident#: 2008-080395
60-89 14
Average Time: 20.5
90-119 4
120-149 6
>150 7
Date: 03/06/2009 Page: 1 Time: 11:43 AM
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