Tim Darland, Fire Chief
As the Covid-19 pandemic continued through 2021, the fire district remained vigilant during peak times of local infection rates. This impacted the district’s training, maintenance and, to some extent, response to calls. However, your community first responder volunteers are a dedicated group of professionals that continued to answer the call. While compiling the emergency call and training/maintenance data, it is of interest to me to see if any anomalies come forth while pulling the numbers together. One fact in particular rose to the top. A first responder had an extraordinary amount of responses through the year, and that was Lieutenant Tom McMackin. Tom had responded to 99 of the 123 total fire district calls. Truly amazing, Tom! Along with Tom’s individual call volume, High Prairie Fire Department volunteers collectively responded 354 times through 2021 with an average of 2.9 individuals responding to each call. I reflect on these response numbers and I feel honored to know these individuals on our fire department.
To recap 2021 HPFD activities: Members responded to a total of 123 emergency calls lumped into 5 categories this last year, of which 31 calls were in-district responses. The graph below shows the breakdown. Most of the categories are self-explanatory. The “good intent” calls are where our firefighters were asked to stand down when other departments maintained control of their emergency scene or alarm companies called to cancel responding units.
To calculate the value of service we take the number of hours spent on emergency responses and training/maintenance activities and multiply it by the total personnel time on each activity. Then we multiply the number of volunteer hours by $28.54, the average emergency services hourly wage (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). The table below shows that HPFD MEMBERS VOLUNTEERED A TOTAL OF 940 HOURS in 2021! THE VALUE OF SERVICE TO OUR COMMUNITY TOTALED $26,828.
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge our Fire Commissioners, who sign a waiver not to get paid for their time serving in their elected positions, which keeps more dollars in the budget for operation and maintenance needs. Thank you for your dedication to our department and community. One other person to acknowledge is our Administrative Assistant, Glenna Scott. She is a paid member of our department and worth every penny we give her.
With great sadness, we remember our colleague, Rob Taylor, who passed away on Tuesday, April 12. Rob was a dedicated volunteer firefighter for 10 years (retired February 2016) with the High Prairie Fire Department. Our hearts go out to Madelon and the entire Taylor family. He will be missed!