11th Annual Safety Awareness Fair, Saturday, May 12th 10:00am to 2:00pm at the Port Orchard Fred Meyer Park & Ride Parking Lot.

Thank You to everyone that came to the 49th Annual Easter Breakfast at Olalla Station 12! Between breakfast, raffle tickets, and other donations, the South Kitsap Volunteer Association and IAFF 2876 were able to raise $2,300. This year the money will be donated to a deserving local family in Olalla who lost a father and husband to a courageous battle with cancer a year ago, have lost their family home, and are trying to start re-living their life in a different place. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they move forward.

Please Vote!

As your fire chief I work on three basic initiatives. Ensure South Kitsap Fire and Rescue (SKFR) follows best management practices for our industry. Ensure SKFR proactively measures progress for community risk reduction. Ensure that SKFR fosters a positive relationship rooted in open communication with our citizens that synchronizes services desired with services provided.

South Kitsap Fire and Rescue serves the largest population at 73,168 in Kitsap County and is the busiest fire district in Kitsap County with 7,138 emergency calls for help in 2011. For 2012, SKFR has the lowest taxes collected and the lowest annual budget dollars per capita of population served. South Kitsap Fire and Rescue also has the lowest taxes collected and the lowest annual budget dollars per emergency call compared to any other fire district in this county. SKFR is in its 12th year as an internationally accredited fire service agency through the Center for Public Safety Excellence (www.publicsafetyexcellence.org) The funding comparisons above serve as a snapshot that lends credibility to SKFR as a high value public service organization that consistently provides an efficient and effective operation with the precious tax resources their community provides. Using public safety best management practices as required through accreditation give citizens the biggest fire/EMS bang for their taxpayer buck.

We provide emergency services for the citizens of SKFR through eight staffed fire stations and eight volunteer stations. We currently have 102 career members and 60 active volunteers to accomplish this mission. Since 2006, SKFR has reduced its management and support staff by five positions, leaving 17 support positions. In a service industry less than 17% of the total is considered a lean and effective full-time support staff. All career Firefighters, Lieutenants, Captains and Battalion Chiefs are either EMT’s or paramedics since over 71% of what we do today is emergency medicine. There are a total of 84 career members assigned to 24 hour shift and 17 career members in support. Six of the 17 assigned to support have a duel support/operational role to help SKFR meet its mission.

In 2006, voters approved the first 6-year fire levy, and since then SKFR has reduced emergency response times by 195 seconds. We did this by staffing Station 11 (Bethel Road) with two Firefighter/EMTs around the clock after the 6-year fire levy funding was approved. In 2009, SKFR voters approved the six year EMS levy which allowed SKFR to staff Station 9 (Yukon Harbor) with two Firefighter/EMT’s around the clock. In both cases we received a federal SAFER Act grant to offset local property tax costs by nearly $2 million collectively.

South Kitsap Fire and Rescue’s 2006 temporary fire levy is set to expire at the end of this year. That levy represents $1.7 million of the total $12 million in property taxes collected for 2012. That equates to an average of 26.6 cents per $1,000 of assessed value on your home or commercial building. The median valued home in South Kitsap is right about $225,000, which means this home owner will continue to pay $60 a year to renew this levy. If this renewal is approved, SKFR Fire Commissioners have promised through their resolution that will only collect the same amount of tax in 2013 as they did this year. This levy renewal will run for another six years and allows SKFR to continue the current level of service that we have worked so hard to build together. I urge all citizens to study this critical community issue by visiting the SKFR website (www.skfr.org) and through other credible sources and then make sure you vote when the mail-in ballot arrives at the end of this month.

Sincerely,

Wayne Senter, Fire Chief

South Kitsap Fire Rescue

49th Annual Easter Breakfast this Sunday, April 8th at Olalla Fire Station 12.  Also Saturday, April 7th there will be an Easter Egg hunt from 10:00am to 11:00am at Olalla Elementary for Kids 8 and under, or Triangle Park in Olalla for Kids over 8.

Why is Fire Service Accreditation Important?

By Battalion Chief Doug Richards, SKFR Accreditation Manager

In August of 2000, South Kitsap Fire Rescue became an accredited agency through the Commission for Fire Accreditation International (CFAI). This was a 3 year process that involved a complete assessment of how we respond and do business as a fire agency. Since that initial accreditation, SKFR has successfully re-accredited every 5 years, our last being in August of 2010. Accreditation serves as a proven method of evaluation and is a valuable achievement for the organization and community.

There are two steps in the evaluation. Initially, accreditation involves a self-evaluation process that looks at over 260 criteria, including 82 core competencies which are mandatory requirements. Each criterion must describe the program, analyze its effectiveness, plan for improvement and show documentation to prove it. This self-assessment is divided into 10 categories. They are: Administration, Planning, Goals, Finances, Programs, Physical resources, Human resources, Training, Communications, and Inter-Agency relationships. This is coupled with three mandatory base documents: the Standard of Cover, Strategic Plan and a Community Risk Assessment. All of these represent a comprehensive evaluation of how we provide emergency services in our respective community including response times, station locations, frequency of events, critical staffing, resources, and historical data.

This self-evaluation manual is in essence a blue-print of our organization. By identifying strengths and weaknesses, it also becomes a roadmap to continuous self-improvement that allows us to work towards achieving the highest level of service delivery in the most cost effective manner.

Once the self-assessment manual is completed and approved to form by outside peer assessors trained in this discipline, a peer team conducts an on-site review which usually lasts three days. The peer team is an independent third party evaluation compromised of fire service members, City Managers, or Insurance industry personnel selected from various areas within the United States who have experience with like agencies and have no relationship with our agency. This independence gives them the ability to objectively evaluate the organization based upon industry standards and best management practices. If all the supporting documentation is verified as valid and the FESSAM is credible, then the site evaluation team recommends the organization for accreditation to the CFAI.

While the accreditation process is intensive and time consuming, it has a direct positive impact on the way South Kitsap Fire Rescue serves its citizens. The process provides a transparent and detailed method to determine how to achieve the highest level of service within the current levels of funding. It allows for strategic planning that will guide and direct the organization into the future. Accreditation also continually analyzes community risk to ensure that the organization is using its resources efficiently and effectively.

Accreditation continues to be a cornerstone at South Kitsap Fire Rescue as we work to improve our service delivery to our citizens. When we look to the future of Fire and EMS service in the community, we are confident that accreditation will provide a well defined roadmap that is realistic and credible. See http://publicsafetyexcellence.org/agency-accreditation/about-accreditation-cfai.aspx for additional information.

Doug Richards

Battalion Chief

South Kitsap Fire Rescue

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in the Fire Service

By Battalion Chief/Medical Officer Mike Wernet

Over the past few weeks there have been articles in the paper regarding our Standard of Cover and Accreditation. As they explained, we use those documents to analyze our department so that we can provide the best possible response and service to our community. As the Medical Officer for South Kitsap Fire and Rescue I would like to take this opportunity to explain a few things about how the EMS side of our department operates.

Over 70% of our calls for help are medical in nature. Seconds do count when your heart stops, you have uncontrollable bleeding or you’re having difficulty breathing. SKFR has 84 career line firefighters, 19 of them are duel trained as paramedics and the other 65 are Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs). These firefighters work on a 24 hour shift rotation. In our 118 square mile response area, we have 7 staffed stations with 2 firefighters and one is staffed with 4 firefighters. The small crew size allows for a quicker initial response time and allows for us to stabilize a patient quicker. Each station has an ambulance and a fire engine to respond to emergencies. Depending on the nature of the call, the firefighters respond in the appropriate vehicle. We call this cross-staffing.

Accreditation dictates that we use a system called critical tasking to determine the effective response force needed to provide the proper staffing, equipment and treatment to have a successful outcome for each type of emergency. This is why you may see a single fire engine, single ambulance or a combination of vehicles at any given emergency scene. Anytime someone calls 911 the closest available station responds first with two firefighters, but some EMS calls require up to six firefighters which we deploy through a layered response system.

For example, a fall that may not require a trip to the hospital is coded as a basic life support (BLS) medical call. This requires 2 firefighter EMTs, so the closest available BLS qualified unit would respond. Ambulances and fire engines are qualified BLS units. If the call required treatment and transport, in addition to the closest unit we would also send an ambulance with transport capabilities. When the call is dispatched as an advanced life support (ALS) call, such as heart problems or respiratory distress, 4 firefighters are needed and one must be a certified paramedic. These same numbers would apply to calls with multiple patients; this is why you may see one, two or even three ambulances at the scene of a car accident. If that same accident has a fire or extrication rescue potential then there may also be one or two fire engines at this call.

It is interesting to note that SKFR serves a population of over 72,000 people who call South Kitsap their home. Our EMS calls are divided into two basic categories, Advanced Life Support (ALS) and Basic Life Support (BLS). Per our Standard of Cover 55% of our medical calls are dispatched ALS and 45% are BLS. Our top four requests for medical assistance for the last six years have been Traumatic Injuries, Cardiac Issues, Respiratory Emergencies, and Abdominal Problems.

South Kitsap Fire and Rescue is committed to keeping units available to respond to your emergency but at the same time we must have the proper amount of people on a scene to properly mitigate an emergency in accordance with our industry best management practices.

SKFR is internationally accredited because it meets or exceeds these best management practices. This ensures that SKFR provides the best emergency services with the funding our citizens entrust us with. In the past 6 years we’ve hired firefighters and staffed stations in the Bethel and Manchester communities, which have reduced our response time district wide by over 3 minutes. We have also used good spending practices by remounting and refurbishing our ambulance boxes on new chassis rather than buying new vehicles. We have ten ambulances in our fleet and this saves us over $50,000 each year.

If you have any questions regarding this article, please call me at 360-895-6503 or e-mail at mwernet@skfr.org

Respectfully submitted,

Mike Wernet

Battalion Chief / Medical Officer

South Kitsap Fire & Rescue

What does the “RESCUE” in South Kitsap Fire Rescue mean?

By Battalion Chief Guy Dalrymple

South Kitsap Fire Rescue is designated an “all hazards” fire district. Simply put, this means that we respond to all requests for emergency services within the boundaries of the fire district. The purpose of this guest article is to provide a little insight into those services we are able to provide.

As indicated by our name, our primary function is to put out fires and rescue people. As simple as this may sound, it becomes very complicated when we take into account the endless variety of ways that people can get themselves into trouble. Whether it’s a house that accidentally catches on fire, or a child who gets stuck exploring a storm drain, South Kitsap Fire Rescue is ready with a planned and coordinated response.

South Kitsap Fire Rescue responded to 46 building fires and 20 chimney fires in 2011. We also handled 35 vehicle fires ranging from typical sedans to motor homes to a construction excavator. These fires accounted for an estimated two million dollars in damages in 2011. In order to safely extinguish a fire in an average sized home, it takes at least 13 firefighters just to handle the critical fire fighting tasks. If we need to rescue even just one person from that house, that number is almost doubled. Currently, SKFR maintains a minimum on duty staffing of 19 firefighters per day in order to respond to the various emergency service requests we receive on a daily basis. This may seem like a large number until you consider that we cover over 118 square miles and serve approximately 72,000 people. When we have a large fire or numerous emergencies that exceed our staffing abilities, we are able to request assistance from the agencies around us and likewise we send them assistance when needed. This is called Mutual Aid and it is one of the cooperative measures we utilize to make the most effective use of your tax dollars, and those of your neighbors, for mutual benefit.

The fire engines we take to these fires are modern marvels of technology and complexity; yet after 200 years of fire service experience, their main purpose is still to bring plain old water to the fire. The typical fire engine carries between 500 and 750 gallons of water. It has a pump that can move the water at over 2,000 gallons per minute as well as fire hose to deliver the water to the fire. The fire engine also carries a variety of tools including common saws and axes for forcing our way into burning buildings and for creating openings in the roof to allow the fire and dangerous gases to escape. We also carry some specialized tools used for fire fighting and rescue, including the Haligan and Pulaski tools, named after the firefighters who invented them. Two of our fire engines are also equipped with hydraulic rescue tools for getting people out of crashed vehicles. Commonly called the “Jaws of Life,” hydraulic rescue tools actually push apart crushed cars with a force greater than 20,000 pounds per square inch and can cut through all but the most exotic hardened metals.

All of our firefighters also serve a dual role and are trained as either Emergency Medical Technicians or Paramedics so they can render advanced medical aid to the sick and injured. The vast majority of our requests for service are for medical assistance and most of the time the person needing help is found in their home or their car. But occasionally, they are also found in some very precarious places. SKFR has the ability to rescue people from very high places or down in steep ravines as well as those stuck out in Sinclair Inlet or even on the occasional frozen lake. The equipment necessary to safely conduct these rescues can be very expensive and cost prohibitive for a single agency to purchase for their own use. In Kitsap County, we have a very long and successful history of working together with other agencies to share resources and reduce costs. One such example is the Homeland Security Region 2 Technical Rescue Team. Every fire agency in Kitsap County contributes people and resources to support this specialized team that no one agency could afford to do all on their own. Together, we provide a resource that can be called upon at any time to rescue people from collapsed buildings or confined spaces or even from the side of a high cliff.

South Kitsap Fire Rescue has seen many challenging rescues over the years. Whether responding to your chimney fire on a Saturday morning or rescuing a family from 100 feet down a ravine in a crushed car on a dark rainy night, the men and women of SKFR are dedicated to meeting each challenge with professionalism and compassion.

 For further information on the services provided by South Kitsap Fire Rescue, please see our Standard of Cover document located in the Publications section of our web site at www.skfr.org.

 Guy Dalrymple

Battalion Chief

South Kitsap Fire and Rescue’s Standard of Coverage

By Deputy Chief Steve Wright

How does your fire department determine where to put staffing and equipment in the community? South Kitsap Fire and Rescue (SKFR), as an accredited fire agency maintains and operates under a document called the Standard of Coverage (SOC). Each accredited agency is required to draft a SOC that is specific to the community they serve. The SOC becomes the master document that guides the deployment and utilization of the community’s resources in providing fire and emergency medical services.

The SOC document breaks down the community into areas classified by population density. Emergency service agencies have historically found that population density tends to generate a greater need for service. These areas of higher population create a higher call volume and also have an expectation for quicker service. An example of how this expectation for timely service varies is expressed in a simple breakdown of time and distance. If you are in downtown Port Orchard and break your arm, you have a different expectation for help to arrive than if you had the same injury on Blake Island or another rural area of the district. The major challenge here is the time it takes the responders to travel from where they are to where the emergency is located.

There are three density classifications within the 118 square miles that make up the South Kitsap community, they are: urban, suburban, and rural. Geographically, SKFR has 4 % urban, 11% suburban and 85% rural. The majority of people, 51% of the 72,240 population served are located within the urban and suburban areas. 61% of all emergency calls for service occur inside these urban and suburban areas.

SKFR’s SOC is based upon industry best practices and nationally recognized standards for total response times. The time expectations for urban areas are shorter (quicker response) than for the suburban and rural areas of the community. This is based partly on the expected risks in the areas and the time it takes to travel the greater distances involved in the suburban and rural responses. The services provided by any fire rescue organization are time sensitive. SKFR responds to both fire and emergency medical requests for service, each of these have a time sensitive aspect to them. Fires grow at an exponential rate in what we call a time temperature survivability curve. Emergency medical treatment for cardiac arrests, respiratory distress, or uncontrolled bleeding has a 4 to 6 minute timeframe for successful interventions to be delivered.

SKFR staffs 8 of the 16 fire stations in the South Kitsap community on a 24 hour basis. All of these stations, except for one, have two personal on duty. Station 31 (Tremont Street) in the Port Orchard area is the exception with four on-duty. All Firefighters are either Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) or Paramedics because over 70% of our work is emergency medical. Each two person fire station has a medical vehicle and fire engine. Depending on the nature of the call, that crew takes the appropriate vehicle.

Each emergency task has been analyzed to determine how many people are needed and what skills and tools they need to provide a successful outcome. We call this critical tasking and the effective response force. A person complaining of chest pain requires four people, one of which must be certified as a Paramedic the other three as EMT’s. On a typical house fire the effective response force consists of 13.

Since our community is geographically large, we find better medical outcomes by staffing fire stations with crews of two. This allows teams of two to arrive quicker to begin stabilizing the patient. We measure how long it takes the initial team and the entire effective response force to arrive on all calls. Spreading the teams of two throughout the district improves what we call reliability for our initial response. Initial crews can start medical treatment or fire suppression activities as additional help responds in from the next closest stations. In cases involving medical aid, EMT crews can start basic life support as a tiered response of advanced life support units respond in behind them. This type of layered response has proven to provide the best level of success in a community as diverse as South Kitsap.

Accreditation and its industry best standards mean that we constantly look for the best method of service delivery with the resources our community funds. It has positioned us to continue a credible emergency service delivery program as we enter our 12th year as an accredited agency through the Center for Public Safety Excellence.

If you have questions regarding this article, please call me at 360 895-6502 or e-mail at swright@skfr.org

Respectfully submitted,

Steve Wright

Deputy Chief

South Kitsap Fire Rescue