Challenges Faced, Challenges Met
I think that the two biggest challenges in today's world for a first responder agency are keeping a sufficient staff of highly skilled individuals and staying abreast of trends in the fire suppression or emergency medical service. Let me touch on staffing first.
Here at ESD 47/Westlake, we are currently well staffed. That does not mean that we are not taking in newcomers. Oh no, we always welcome new recruits to our agency. Our current staffing level is at or near an all time high number. That comes as no surprise given that fact that we have a new state-of-the-art fire station with a ton of creature comforts, new apparatus across the board, high tech tools and equipment, and just a pleasurable work environment. We are truly blessed, but candidly, folks do move away from the area all the time for various reasons and replacements are always needed.
So I move on to the other challenge and that is keeping up with trends in the first responder arena. I was told of a study done by a company called ESO out of Austin. In their comprehensive report, they referenced a study into over 72,000 working fires during the 2020-2021 reporting period of which about 32% were structure fires which is a small increase over a few years prior. What blew me away was that 80% of the structure fires were residential type fires. This is a large jump percentage-wise over the previous two years. Commercial building fires were down. Why? That's easy. People were working from home and not going into their office everyday. So why the fires? Also easy. Homeowners would be on an online work meeting and it should be ending soon so they put a pot on the stove to cook. Well, someone in the meeting begins to speak endlessly and before you know it, there's a fire in the kitchen.
Is Westlake in a position to take care of residential fires? Absolutely!! Last October, I watched our crew attack a house fire just down the street from me. When they arrived there were flames coming out of the garage. They contained the fire (or as firefighters say: "put a stop on it") in about two miniutes. In another two minutes, they had the fire knocked down to a point where they could finish it off. Trust me when I say that's not the case everywhere in this world, or even in Texas.
Challenges are also true for our EMS protocols. A challenge that we are looking at here is falls by the elderly. The fact is folks are living longer than ever before. Bless them! It's also true that there are few QUALITY care facilities for our non bedridden 80 year old and above crowd that don't charge an arm and a leg. Thus, the elderly wind up living with a child or grandchild in their home. That's great, but what happens when they head off to work or to enjoy some time out in the town? The elderly are left alone and many times they slip and fall when moving around the house. The result is an EMS call which may or may not end up in a transfer to the local hospital. We have done some tweaks to our responses and hopefully we've got this situation smoothed out.
So that's just a quick peak at some of the things that are done behind the scenes here at ESD 47/Westlake so that when you as a resident call 9-1-1, Westlake responds quickly with the equipment and know how to remedy the problem.
Challenges faced, Challenges met.
Until next month, stay safe
Brian Havran