HomeMy WebLinkAboutrepjan15.pdfHonorable Kate Supron
Board of Trustees
Village of Cayuga Heights
Monthly Report January 2015
In the first month of the New Year we ran 46 calls. There were 20 calls in the Village of Cayuga Heights, 23
calls in the Town of Ithaca and 3 mutual aid requests. We had 21 EMS runs and 25 fire calls. On January
11th, a brutally cold night, we were requested to AES Cayuga in Lansing for a turbine fire. We responded a
full crew to the power generating plant to work with the Lansing Fire Department on fire sup pression. We
arrived to find that one of the turbines on a 3 story tall generating units was on fire. Because of the nature of
the fire there was no water used on this fire. The attack on the fire was made with ABC fire extinguishers.
The facility had industrial extinguishers that hold 40 pounds of dry chem that we used first then the rest of the
time we used regular sized fire extinguishers. Lansing requested that we bring all of our extinguishers from
our station and then contacted several other agencies to respond to the scene with all of their extinguishers.
Working with Lansing we were able to bring the fire under control in about an hour. The Lansing Fire Chief
contacted Fulton Enterprises and they came in and refilled our extinguishers that day and covered the cost of
the refills. This was a first time at this kind of fire for many of our members.
We continued training our new members and working through checklists for most of January. Most of the
new members are very close to completing their checklists and are enrolled in the NYS Firefighter 1 class in
the spring. At the end of the month, after all students were back in town, we had our annual OSHA refresher
training. We have 54 members of the fire department at this time. On our annual t raining day we had 47
members at the station for the entire day of OSHA and CPR refresher. We had three members taking other
classes that day, three members out of town and one probationary member not show up. Getting 47 people to
voluntarily give up an entire Saturday to sit in a classroom going over OSHA refresher shows an amazing
amount of dedication. Anybody not at the station for the training is immediately restricted by the department
until the training is made up by sitting in front of a computer and going through the entire training and then
taking a written test. The three members who were in a class on Saturday completed the training on Sunday
morning.
We had two bunker rooms come available in January. Lieutenant David Sorensen and Leah Stone r, both
members of the department, got married in December. David was a bunker for several years and he and Leah
are renting here in the village and are still active members. Lieutenant Rob Shepherd was hired as a paid
firefighter by the Ithaca Fire Department and decided with the time he will have to spend while training with
IFD he would not be able to dedicate the time to the CHFD so he moved out of the station. He took a short
leave of absence but is looking to move back to the department after his probationary period with the city.
We hope that he does well with IFD and hope even more that his plans to move back into the district pan out
as he is an amazing firefighter and we don’t want to lose him permanently. The rooms were filled by
Firefighter/EMT Irwin Tendler and Firefighter Devon Savoy. Both are very dedicated members and we are
looking forward to having them as bunkers for several years to come.
In 2013 the NYS Health Department Council of EMS Physicians sent a letter to all Advanced Lif e Support
agencies mandating that, to maintain ALS status, our agency would have to carry EMS level narcotics. We
have been carrying front line lifesaving medications for years but have not had to carry narcotics. This
required us to develop a detailed SOP for the carrying of controlled substances and to purchase a medication
vault to secure the narcotics in the rescue truck. The medication vault itself was over $1,000.00. After
spending countless hours developing the policy and getting all the required signatures from the mayor,
president at CMC, the agency medical director and the pharmacist at CMC we were all set to send the
paperwork to the health department. I called the regional representative from the health department to let him
know the paperwork was on the way and he informed me that the council had determined that they did not
have the authority to mandate the carrying of narcotics without it being made a health department regulation
and that this process was being shelved for 3 to 10 years while they worked through the regulatory process.
We have decided to file the SOP that we developed and if the state eventually mandates that we carry
narcotics we will be ready to immediately apply for the license and stock the medication.
We hope that 2015 will prove as exciting and fulfilling as 2014 was. The members of this department will
continue to strive to provide top quality fire and EMS protection to our district.
Sincerely,
George Tamborelle
Fire Chief/Fire Superintendent