(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . 45 Degrees North: Making a Difference With Cookies and Gatorade [1] ['Donna Kallner', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Date: 2024-12-06 Here’s the kind of math a rural volunteer fire chief might be doing in their head en route to a structure fire: One engine operator plus two on each hose line. A tender operator hauling water from a fill site. Minimum of two for an entry plus two on back-up, ideally more plus a Rapid Intervention Team (RIT) on standby. Figure 40 minutes minimum before additional equipment and personnel might arrive from mutual aid partners – if they can get through the scrum of Lookie Lous soon to line both shoulders of the road. When you have barely enough trained personnel to fill those jobs, who’s left for traffic control? In some rural departments, tasks like that may now go to volunteers not willing or able to climb ladders or crawl through a smoke-filled structure but with other skills to offer. The Wolf River Volunteer Fire Department opened membership to volunteers who don’t go through firefighter training in 2009. I had been part of the department’s river rescue team since 1990, and had responded to search calls over the years but wasn’t a firefighter. Yet when a tornado hit here in 2007, I responded to the scene and began to assist with accountability for the first responders and many other volunteers who showed up wanting to help. That event convinced this department we could use more people who didn’t necessarily have to become firefighters. We didn’t have a playbook for what those people might do or how to train them. But the people who volunteered figured out ways to be useful at all types of incidents, including structure fires, wildland fires, and motor vehicle accidents. Our officers supported the team as members learned to manage accountability, recordkeeping and rehab. The systems and procedures we developed were tested in 2019 when a derecho (hurricane-force straight-line winds) hit our area. It was so much worse than the 2007 tornado. But with 10 years of experience we managed to feed and hydrate a large cohort of mutual aid responders, and our accountability and recordkeeping helped our rural municipality qualify for FEMA disaster response reimbursement. We learned a lot from that experience, and are still learning. Some of what we’ve learned might help other rural communities looking to supplement a pool of volunteer first responders with non-firefighters – what my department calls the Support Team. Cookies and accountability. In a rural area like this, we often have initial responders arriving on scene at multiple times in different apparatus and in personal vehicles, then mutual aid partners from other departments arriving much later. Personnel may be spread out over large areas with lots of hidden hazards. We need to be able to account for everyone working where it’s hot, cold, icy, where ash and debris are flying and possibly igniting grass or other combustibles. Early on, one of our support team members suggested training our firefighters with cookies. People who checked in with accountability on arrival and before leaving got home-baked cookies. Those who forgot theoretically didn’t. But that happened rarely (they are very good cookies). We baked for trainings with other agencies, and stocked the station freezer with cookies for calls. Our mutual aid partners also learned to look for accountability on our scenes, and we rewarded them with cookies. Our system may not be perfect, but with it we know at a glance, for example, how many people we might need to feed during an incident. Bodies need fuel. In cities and small towns, fire departments can send someone to the drive-thru at McDonald’s or Subway if necessary. Where I live, that’s a minimum one-hour round trip – if you can spare someone to make a food run. There are places nearby we can order food from – when they’re open. But for incidents that begin or stretch into the wee hours, our support team keeps supplies in the station to provide at least some calories to keep people going – things like summer sausage and granola bars. And some of us keep things at home that can be pulled from the freezer and prepared in less time than it takes to drive to town and back. Support team members can play an important role in trainings as well as incidents. Here, the rehab area is set up for a live burn training. (Photo by Donna Kallner / The Daily Yonder) Preplanning. In late October, I was visiting Washington Island, Wisconsin, for a conference when the island had a big wildland fire. Alerted by folks from home, I listened to my scanner app as mutual aid resources from throughout the county responded to the ferry dock on the mainland and arrived on the island. Earlier that evening, my friends and I had managed to order burgers at the only place still open on an off-season Sunday afternoon before it, too, closed at 4pm. So I ran through a mental list of what I might have to contribute to feeding volunteers working the incident. The answer was not much and that it would be best to stay out of the way. I learned the next day that the Door County MABAS Incident Support Team had responded, and their preplanning for just such an event paid off. At home, our guys might be lucky to get fried egg sandwiches made with every heel of bread and odd bagel, muffin and tortilla to be found in my kitchen. Their guys got breakfast sent over from Al Johnson‘s Swedish Restaurant, a Door County institution. And a porta potty (morning plus coffee – you know what that means). We salute you, DC MABAS IST, for a job well done. But I’ve advised my chief not to expect Swedish pancakes. Water and Gatorade. In fire service parlance, rehab covers things like providing food and hydration as well as a place and support for rest breaks. In the rural fire service, firefighters may be on a task longer than national standards recommended because there’s no one available to relieve them until mutual aid resources arrive. People come directly from work or whatever with little or no time to grab something to eat or drink en route. So one of the top priorities of our support team is hydration. We carry bottled drinking water and Gatorade on our trucks. But in apparatus that might respond to everything from wildland fires to grain bin rescue to motor vehicle extrications, every inch of space is precious. There just isn’t room for everything and enough hydration supplies for a large or extended incident. So support team members sometimes transport those items separately. 5-gallon buckets. One tool used extensively in our rehab scheme is the 5-gallon bucket. En route to a scene, a team member can quickly sweep cold bottles from the shelves of the station refrigerator into empty buckets and throw bags of ice from the freezer into other buckets. Buckets are easier to carry than cases, and can be staged in convenient locations where firefighters can grab what they need (although handing them a bottle with instructions to drink is even more effective). An empty bucket is a convenient perch for someone who needs a few minutes off their feet. We also use buckets of cold water to soak cloths we can apply to the heads and necks of firefighters who need to cool off. The fire rehab class we took years ago suggested a three-bucket system – one for clean cloths, one with bleach solution for sanitizing dirty cloths, and one for rinsing out the bleach before reuse. We don’t bother: Used cloths get thrown on the ground and we round them up later to wash for reuse. We cut up thrift store sheets and tie-dye them to make them easier to find wherever they drop (and because the guys laughed the first time we had tie dyed cooling cloths, so we keep doing it for our entertainment). Training. On our department, firefighters and support team train together. And there’s a lot to train on, even without fire school. We respond to more traffic incidents on rural roads than structure fires so want all of our support volunteers to be trained in Traffic Incident Management (TIM) and be wearing at least a high-visibility vest before setting foot on a roadway. Our department’s support team members have trained to fill roles in incident command, incident reporting, grant writing, search and rescue, public information officer, rehab and more. Making water, Gatorade and food for energy available and accessible to firefighters is a key role for support team members on the Wolf River Volunteer Fire Department. (Photo by Donna Kallner / The Daily Yonder) Insurance. In the early years, our support team members were not considered full members of the department. But like firefighters, we respond to scenes where we face hazards. So our chief went to the town board to advocate for getting support team members covered by the same insurance that covers volunteer firefighters. In some departments, that might require a change to bylaws or other considerations. The moms. Recently, members of our support team were requested to assist at a live burn training hosted by another agency in our county. A new member of our department observed and helped as we set up the rehab area then commented, “I get it – you’re the moms.” What we do may look like what you might see from parents on the sidelines at peewee soccer games: We keep track of who is where and doing what, hand out drinks and snacks, clean eyeglasses, celebrate achievements, listen to frustrations, and watch out out for signs of overexertion or environmental stress. Except on the fireground, we’re supporting people wearing 50+ pounds of gear and a host of others who may be deployed to multiple sites that can be stretched across miles of country roads. We may be driving equipment that costs our communities more than any of us make in a year at our paying jobs. We get the same pay as those who go through fire school (zip, zero, nada). But it takes a lot less money to outfit a non-firefighter to play a supporting role – a role that frees up firefighters to do jobs we can’t. Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin. She’s a member of the Wolf River Volunteer Fire Department. Related Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailyyonder.com/45-degrees-north-making-a-difference-with-cookies-and-gatorade/2024/12/06/ Published and (C) by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailyyonder/