Congratulations Fredericktown Fire Department on your new station. Fredericktown Fire Department hosted the Region E Mutual Aid meeting on July 11 and gave us a tour of their new home. Their new home has a very nice training room as you walk in the front door. The dayroom and bunk rooms for future growth are set up away from the offices and training room. The design has a gear room off of the bay with showers and gear extractors to keep gear separated from the fire bay and crew areas. Very nice new home for a great group of firefighters.
How many chief officers are attending Regional Mutual Aid meetings? It’s a great place to meet other chiefs and learn. So many times, we work with our close neighbors but when the big ones hit where regional mutual aid kicks in, it may be the first time some of us meet. These meetings give us an opportunity to meet and learn the capabilities of other organizations before we have to go to work together. Sometimes just to share a meal with our brothers and sisters and network is just the medicine we need; it is for me. So many ideas come out of these meetings from the networking that help us do better when we work together.
Region E (District 12 for FFAM) has hit the ground running with meetings in different areas of the region on a regular basis. At the July meeting, the Cape Girardeau Fire Department brought in the communications truck that is deployable throughout our region in the event of a large incident. The capabilities of this asset are pretty awesome. It can be set up in an area with satellite communications, VHF radio, and MoSWIN, and has several capabilities to greatly enhance communications. We depend on cell phones but what happens when they don’t work? The technology in this asset can make phone calls through old systems as well as new ones.
Without going to this meeting, some of us wouldn’t have known everything it can actually do. Plus, how easy through the mutual aid system it can be sent out to assist.
Those in attendance also got to meet our Statewide Mutual Aid Coordinator as well as some really nice people from Three Rivers Community College.
If you aren’t going to these meetings, I encourage you to, it’s worth the time to meet and talk with people we don’t get to work with every day.
Until next time thank you for all you do for your communities and stay safe out there.
FFAM
