Fire Statistics

Interesting read from "Firesafety.gov for Citizens". The number of residential fires hit an all time low in 2009 (good) but when looking at the trending over the last 10 years I would have expected the results to be much better than they are. In fact, the difference between 2000 and 2009 is less than a .6% improvement. Injury & death as a percent of fires is even better with a 16% improvement.

Year Fires Inj & death as % of Fire
2000 379,500 4.93%
2001 396,500 4.72%
2002 401,000 4.17%
2003 402,000 4.29%
2004 410,500 4.24%
2005 396,000 4.26%
2006 412,500 3.77%
2007 414,000 4.07%
2008 403,000 4.05%
2009 377,000 4.14%
Source: National Fire Protection Association Fire Loss in the U.S. During 2009
Not sure what my point is but we know fire safety is much stronger today then it ever has been. But fires still happen. Every Day. 1032 per day to be exact. 43 per hour. Almost one residential house fire every minute.
Test your smoke alarms and be fire safe.

Prevention.....better than suppression!

It took nearly a year but our new logo'd fire wear has incorporated Prevention along with Fire & Rescue.

Slowly, prevention is coming part of our daily culture.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning came with a call at 7am with “visible flames, unknown occupants”. A thoughtful neighbor saw flames within a home across her backyard so she dialed 911. Christmas morning, just as many of the kids are awaking new gifts, a dozen or so EPFD were paged. We dashed through the morning snow to hop our fire engines in tow….Engine 41, Tower 21, Engine 12 and Engine 31. Chief 2 arrived on scene to determine the call was due to a Yule log…burning brightly through a 42” Plasma TV. Yes, our thoughtful neighbor was witnessing the television channel of the holiday Yule Log.

I am not sure what is worse, the nosy neighbor looking through her windows or the family watching a fire on TV?

Another Mutual Aid

The page went off shortly after 1am this morning for an engine to a house fire in Edina. I've been up ever since (currently 12:15pm sitting at Dunn's having a cup of coffee). E41 ended up being the 3rd engine to go into service after a second alarm call. We went directly to Edina station 1 to cover the city.
Kare 11 coverage can be seen here

Temps dropped well below zero for during this effort. Everyone said we were better off covering the city from the comforts of station 1 vs. being on scene....maybe, at least I know that whether we are on scene or at the station we are serving a purpose.

OSHA

Last night was three hours of OSHA training. At least it was a bit interactive as the class took the form of a game of jeopardy
Categories included:
PPE
Back problems
Roadway safety
Lock out/tag out
Blood born pathogens





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Busy Sunday

Today was a day that turned out to be relatively quiet even though I spent the majority of the day at the station. A mutual aid call came in around noon from SLP requesting a special unit from EP. Kare11 reported it as:


As we waited out the call at Station 1 ended up going to a church Halloween party with E12....just as we opened the engine for kids we received a page for a kitchen fire. Fortunately, it was small put out relatively quickly....but it did give me the chance to drive e12 code 3 across the city.

Warehouse Fire

Last night we had a call for an industrial fire. A piece of machinery caught on fire.
This size up had visible flames, heavy smoke, building evacuated. We were second engine in and the fire was out. Turned out to be a very isolated piece of equipment but it generated a ton of smoke. We spent the next two hours working ventilation.