Fire / Rescue & Prevention

Just spent the weekend up in St Cloud MN attending the FITOAM (Fire Instructors & Training Officers Association of Minnesota. I was able to get my Fire & Life Safety Educator State Certification I.

This has been interesting for me as I have a whopping a 18 months of Fire experience under my belt and the average attendee at this conference was at least 18 years (mostly suppression)....but that is okay. The whole goal behind prevention is prevent the (negative) experience. There are enough examples out there of what not to do….our job is to make sure people are aware of those (negative) experiences to prevent them from happening again.

Plus, the better we do the less actual suppression experience we get….which for a fire fighter can be a bummer but I hope we’d all agree that our adrenaline rush is not the right reason to stop prevention.

So I had an epiphany this weekend….see 100’s of fire fighters all walking around with their Fire / Rescue sweatshirts at an education conference….why not add “prevention” to our identity?

FIRE / RESCUE
PREVENTION

Battle of the Badges

Finally some healthy competition between cities. Eden Prairie Fire is going head to head agains Bloomington Fire to see who can 'donate' the most blood (aka, Battle of the Badges.

I have no idea what the 'awards' are but we going for the most pints and most Fire Fighters as a percent of the total. Friends and Family are welcome (just be sure to mention Eden Prairie Fire when you do donate.

My donation took place earlier this morning.......This is the first time I have donated blood.....it was pretty simple and realatively fast.

A new start 2010

Last night was the only evening when the EPFD is totally out of commission.  Thanks to our neighboring cities (Chanhassen and Hopkins Fire to cover our city) we were able to the evening off and celebrate our 2009 Holiday Party.

Station 4 hosted this year event at Olympic Hills Country Club.   a great turn out with 150 or so current and past FF’s.