A survey from the American Animal Hospital Association estimates that approximately 40,000 animals die each year due to lack of first aid because fire responders usually don’t have the special tools that can deliver life-saving oxygen for smoke inhalation for pets.

Fire departments around the country are recognizing the need to acquire specialty oxygen masks that are designed for cats, dogs and other pets caught in house fires.  Animal advocates, community groups and pet-products suppliers are beginning to fill the need to equip local fire departments all over the United States.

Continue reading Updated: Help Us Help Pets Affected By Smoke & Fire →

Volunteer Fire Departments in the news on Fox 16. Some video footage includes WPFD equipment and personnel.

Fox 16 Special Report: Volunteer Fire Departments

These folks recently completed their training and exams to finish a 40-hour course of advanced first aid. Congratulations to these WPFD firefighters for reaching Certified First Responder status : Andrew Brzozowski-EMT, ambulance Micheal Felton, Andy Moore, Kirk Holt, Karyn Holt, David Moody, Joseph Reeves, Dan Speerly and Scott Matthews .

Sometimes when you see WPFD respond there will be lots of trucks, thumb manpower and activity associated with a specific emergency incident. You might be wondering just what is going on at an emergency scene but you never get to hear our conversations. Well, our folks are quite busy responding quickly and with the right equipment to manage an incident effectively. To do this, we rely heavily on communications of radio and voice pagers to coordinate this response.  We ensure everyone knows what to do and where to be with quick communication. Here is a sample of a recent call involving a structure fire with responses from two station companies and several pieces of equipment (apparatus or “fire-trucks”).  By the way…this was all done in the middle of the night when most of us were already sleeping quite soundly (2:22 am). With some short notice, we can be quite organized and effective….even though our sleep was interrupted.  This sample is actually an entire response (what we say and hear to each other) to the structure fire but plays as a continuous recording of actual voice traffic over a 2-hour period but can be listened to within a 6-minute period.

Click this link to listen —>>>     October Structure Fire- Audio

12 years in the making, WPFD finally got to perform evaluation exercises for ISO testing earlier today.  With newer equipment and a lot of newer folks since the last ISO test in 1999, we practiced quite a bit over the past few months to be ready for our exam. Things went pretty well as we hauled water, pumped/sprayed and refilled trucks to simulate a structure fire situation needing larger water volumes. Today’s evaluation was only a part of a several month program to gain ‘credit’ with the Insurance Services Organization that partly determines the homeowner insurance premiums of an area based on the water supply (hydrants) and capabilities (manpower, equipment, training, etc) of a fire department that services the homes area. Follow the link to for pictures of our folks in action during the demonstration:

Continue reading ISO Dump and Pump Exercises – 9/12/2011 →