Mayor's Community Update - 05/03/2019
Greetings! Spring is upon us and as temperatures begin to rise, I wanted to overview the work happening within the Fire Department and Emergency Management. Beginning with Emergency Management, severe weather season is among us. Earlier this month, the City participated in the State-wide Tornado drill. Folks are reminded that now is the time to ensure you have an emergency plan and a survival kit. The outdoor warning sirens are meant to alert folks who are outside so everyone should make sure they have a NOAA weather alert radio in their home to be notified when severe weather is approaching. Over the past few years, the City has experienced an increasing frequency of storm and heavy rain events. We continue to work closely with Dodge and Fond du Lac Counties on hazard mitigation plans. These plans are important in making sure we identify areas where hazards commonly occur and allows us to apply for grants to mitigate these areas in the future. Readiness and mitigation planning are areas of emphasis as we move forward.
Switching to the Fire Department, work continues into this year with talk around consolidation of the City and Country Fire Departments. Having two departments means each department has their own equipment. We believe there is money that can be saved in eliminating equipment duplications along with cost-sharing of other equipment, specifically related to some of the vehicles and other high-price equipment.
With the recent addition of new facilities around the community, pre-planning of these facilities is another priority we are focused on. Pre-planning is a process where we put all the information we know about a building (drawings, hazardous material information, number of people in the building, building construction type, whether it has a sprinkler system, etc.) and put together a pre-scripted plan on what a response to that particular facility would look like. The process for buildings with existing plans is as simple as verifying that no major changes have taken place, for new facilities, these plans can take a number of weeks to complete.
A third project that will be focused on is a recruitment strategy to try and engage folks in the post-high to 30-year-old range. Recruitment and retention in the volunteer fire service is a nation-wide problem. Based on a report issued by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) from data collected in 2017, 65% of the nation’s firefighters are volunteers. This is the lowest estimate of the number of volunteer firefighters since 1986 when the NFPA began reporting the statistic. While we have historically been able to fill our openings, we have seen a continual decrease in the number of qualified applicants due to a variety of factors. The paid-on-call volunteers that serve and protect Waupun with a high degree of professionalism and countless hours of training also save the community millions of dollars when compared to staffing it with full-time firefighters.
