Three Volunteer Fire Departments Coordinate Protection of Minn. City
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Minnesota’s largest active volunteer municipal fire fighting force—165 men—serves the L-shaped city of Maplewood with an unusual organization for its size and responsibility.
The force consists of three independent volunteer departments that operate from five stations, providing fire and medical support services with their own equipment and high cost equipment purchased by the city—a first tier suburb on the eastern and northern edge of St. Paul.
Coordination is provided by a joint fire chiefs council and by the city through a director of public safety, a fire marshal and paid police department that operates a paramedic response program. The system works well enough to give Maplewood, with a total valuation of more than $282 million and 28,000 residents, a class 5 fire rating.
Savings estimated
“Our approach produces for the city and its citizens an annual fire service savings of approximately $1,260,000,” according to Richard Schaller, public safety director. Also a fire captain with 28 years service, Schaller noted that 10 full-time city or county police officers are also volunteer fire fighters.
“Part of our success comes from the emphasis we place on coordination among the three fire departments and the police department, rather than integration of these services,” he explained. “We work hard at coordination and cooperation, giving prompt and alert attention to any situations that may arise.”
Covering nearly 20 square miles, Maplewood has 6500 single family dwellings, four trailer parks with a total of 350 units and 200 small business places. Major exposures include the 400-acre 3M administrative and research complex with 25 major multistory buildings, including a 16-floor high-rise and 15,000 employees; a 25-acre shopping center with more than 100 stores; a dozen smaller shopping centers; 13 schools; 20 multilevel, multibuilding apartment complexes; 10 medical facilities; three nursing homes; two large motels; county workhouse, county fairgrounds and county arena.
Commercial hazards
The St. Paul Fire Department also is a first-responder to St. Paul and Ramsey County property in Maplewood and provides additional fire response (under private contract) to fire alarms at the 3M complex.
Maplewood also has a 1.5-milliongallon propane gas storage facility, a 95,000-gallon LP terminal and eight warehouses, including one “that would take an 8500-gpm flow to contain if it caught fire.” Portions of four interstate freeways, three state highways and four railroads go through Maplewood.
“We’ve handled a variety of fire emergencies, including commercial transportation accidents, an airplane crash and a $1.5 million high-rise fire in the middle of the night,” reported Maplewood Fire Marshal A1 Schadt, who also is president of the Minnesota State Fire Department Association (covering 574 member departments with 17,000 paid and volunteer fire fighters) and Ramsey County fire fighter of the year for 1981.
Three fire departments
The three separate volunteer fire departments have annual contracts with the city that are paid quarterly. They maintain regular communication with the city through their independent joint chiefs council that meets monthly with either Public Safety Director Schaller or Fire Marshal Schadt in attendance. The council also includes chief officer representatives of the three contracting departments.
The East County Line Fire Department, organized in 1944 and currently headed by Chief Robert Bade, has two stations and covers 7 square miles in eastern and southern Maplewood with 62 fire fighters. It operates three pumpers, one rescue squad, the Maplewood-owned elevating platform, a tank truck, one grass fire unit, a utility van with cascade air system and salvage equipment, one advanced life support ambulance and one basic life support ambulance.
In addition, the East County Line Fire Department provides contract fire and BLS ambulance service for the southern half of neighboring Oakdale and for the adjacent mobile home community of Landfall.
Units include boat
The Gladstone Fire Department, also organized in 1944 and directed by Chief Jerry Kasmirski, has two stations and covers 9 square miles in the central and northern part of the city with 63 fire fighters. It operates four pumpers, a Maplewood-owned 85-foot elevating platform, a rescue squad, including a boat and motor for water rescue, and two ALS ambulances.
The Parkside Fire Department, organized in 1958, has one station and covers nearly 4 square miles of western Maplewood with 40 volunteers. Major equipment includes two pumpers, one rescue squad, a grass fire unit and one ALS ambulance. This department is under the supervision of Chief Thor Bodsgaard.
Independence of the three fire departments is illustrated by the fact that Parkside maintains the traditional red color for its fire vehicles, while the other two departments use a combination of the newer yellow and white colors on their equipment.
The three departments provide back-up support for each other and respond together for serious fire emergencies. They also respond outside the city on call from any of the 22 other suburban members of the Capital City Mutual Aid Association that covers three counties.
Fireground command is provided by the department chief, deputy chief or district chief, who frequently coordinate at the scene with Schadt, a veteran of 32 years of fire service when he retired March 1 as an active member of the Gladstone Fire Department. Schadt, 52, continues as full-time Maplewood fire marshal.
In 1980, the three departments responded to 737 fire cajls and 625 requests for medical assistance. The estimated fire loss for the year was $496,000.
Medical services
The three volunteer fire departments cooperate with the city’s paid police force to give Maplewood a first class emergency medical service for an average of 1200 patients a year.
Maplewood Police Lieutenant Dennis Cusick, who also is district chief of Gladstone Station 2, is one of 10 police paramedics, and he directs the paramedic program that is funded by the city as the result of an enabling referendum. Each paramedic goes through a basic 680-hour training program administered by the St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center.
Two paramedic police officers are assigned to each shift and patrol together in a station wagon equipped with all the necessary lifesaving equipment and medications. The paramedic officers assume all responsibilities and answer all assigned requests for police service when not involved in medical runs. Alerted by radio pagers, off-duty paramedics living in the city respond to requests for medical emergencies when the volume exceeds the effective capacity of the on-duty paramedics.
When a serious medical emergency occurs, EMT-trained volunteer fire fighters also respond from the closest station in an advanced life support ambulance. They assist the police paramedics at the scene and provide transportation to the hospital of the patient’s choice.
EMT training
Maplewood has its own 81-hour EMT training program, approved by the Minnesota Health Department and conducted by the police paramedics. Approximately 80 volunteer fire fighters are EMTs. A monthly EMS meeting attended by two representatives of each fire station, Cusick and the paramedics is held to review and plan operations.
“The cooperative relationship that has developed between the police paramedics and the fire fighters in providing high-level emergency medical service for Maplewood has become a model for other communities around the nation,” Cusick said.
“The fact that Cusick also is a district fire chief has helped a great deal,” Schaller pointed out.
Recruit training
All recruits accepted by the three volunteer departments must pass a physical exam and attend a six-month vocational/technical school course in basic fire fighting techniques that is based on NFPA Standard 1001. The EMT-trained fire fighters also must pass recertification examinations.
“It’s gratifying to see the ality of training our recruits receive,” Chiefs Schaller and Schadt pointed out. “When they come out of fire school, they know more than many fire fighters who’ve been on the force 10 and 12 years.”
Each department has four monthly drills, one of which is medical. In addition, there are regular business meetings and special drills. About 20 fire fighters are sent to the state fire school each year for staff and command training.
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Radio communications
A central radio communications system that includes running cards and automatic fire alarm signals is used to dispatch the three Fire departments, the Maplewood police, and Fire departments from the three neighboring suburbs of North St. Paul, Oakdale and Woodbury. The system also includes two-way radio communications with St. Paul, Ramsey County, adjacent Washington County and the central security station at the large 3M headquarters complex.
“We have developed an integrated fire-police-medical response plan that is coordinated by the central dispatcher,” Schaller explained.
“For example, a traffic accident involving injuries and a fire will bring at the same time a pumper and an ALS ambulance from the nearest fire station, two paramedics and the district police car. The senior fire-rescue officer will be in command. Back-up fire protection will be provided immediately, if necessary, by the next closest fire station.”
Fire prevention emphasized
The city’s current emphasis is on fire prevention, explained Schadt, who is aided by Jim Embertson, a full-time assistant fire marshal, and a seven-person city building inspection department.
Since the office of fire marshal was established in 1966, Schadt reports, 80 percent of the city’s new commercial construction has included the installation of sprinkler systems. He added that Maplewood also is in compliance with state statutes that require all nonsingle family dwellings to have smoke alarms.
“The biggest problem we have now,” Schadt explained, “is bringing existing public occupancy structures, such as rental halls that are not covered by the fire code, up to recommended standards. They lack early detection devices, alarm systems and sprinklers. Installation costs have been a drawback, but the recent hotel and public building fires around the nation may help us overcome the money hurdle.”
Nearly 600 fire inspections of all types were conducted throughout the city in 1980 by the fire marshal’s office, which also uses its arson investigation capability to assist the state fire marshal in Maplewood.
The public education phase of fire prevention is centered on the elementary schools, where special awareness programs were conducted in the first through fifth grades by the fire marshal’s office last year in cooperation with members of the three volunteer fire departments.
