GB fire chief signs mutual aid
BY PAM BRANNON Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

Pam Brannon/Gulf Breeze News Four South Santa Rosa County fire chiefs met Monday to hammer out a mutual aid agreement that has been on hold, with Gulf Breeze refusing to sign, for the past year. The chiefs meeting were (left to right) Gulf Breeze Fire Chief Shane Carmichael, Midway Fire Chief Stephen Demeter, Navarre Beach Fire Chief Michael Howard, and Holley-Navarre Fire Chief Len Slocum.

Twenty months from the time the original South Santa Rosa County Mutual/Automatic Aid Agreement for fire districts was first drawn up - all four south end fire districts plus Escambia Fire District have agreed to sign onto the agreement. And the compromise took less than 15 minutes in a special meeting of the four south end chiefs Monday morning, Oct. 15.

At the end of Monday's meeting Gulf Breeze Fire Chief Shane Carmichael said, "I'm sorry we were the sticky fly in the ointment that has kept this from getting done, but now we have agreement we can all live with."

Midway Fire District, Holley-Navarre Fire District, Navarre Beach Fire Dept., and Escambia Fire District had all signed the agreement in December 2006. Gulf Breeze was the only one refusing to sign.

Carmichael explained, "We had to have one word in one place changed from 'may' to 'shall,' to say the control of a fire scene shall be the district where the fire is. The other language said when any fire department showed up, if they were firefighters from outside the district they 'may' turn over control to the firefighters of that district when they arrived. This makes it clear that they will."

"And we had to have some compromise language in there that would allow non-certified fire fighters to at least drive trucks to the scene of a mutual aid call. Just some language change made it possible for us to sign on," Carmichael said.

Carmichael said he had been to several fire chief meetings, held monthly, and had brought some suggested compromise language to other chiefs several times. But no compromise had been agreed to until this meeting.

"Midway Chief Demeter called and asked for the meeting, so we could get this resolved. The other chiefs agreed to come to the meeting, and with us all face to face we came to a compromise," Carmichael said. "The way the law is now, any new recruit that comes to us off the street has to go through the certification process. But we have some older guys who have been fighting fires for years, and do not want to go through that process now. The law does allow them to do some support services."

He said the way the mutual aid agreement had been written did not allow any non-certified firefighters to respond to a mutual aid call in another fire district. "We have a firefighter who is 60 years old who usually drives our truck. And we have a lot of young guys, like 18, 29, 20 years old. I do not want a young guy who has no real driving experience behind the wheel of my ladder truck that weighs 78,000 pounds."

Carmichael also explained, "The firefighters with certification have green stickers on their helmets. The ones that are noncertified to go into a fire or hot zone have red stickers. We changed the language in one paragraph to read that non-certified firefighters can respond and be used in support situations, like driving the truck, but if we do not have at least two firefighters with green certified stickers, then we won't send the truck at all. We have to have two certified personnel available to respond or we call and say we cannot come to the fire. Everybody was happy with that and it still meets state law."

Carmichael said Gulf Breeze has no paid firefighters or staff, and has 25 volunteers, of whom 18 are currently certified. "Two of three of us work for the city, so that is why we can do this while other areas down here can't. The city has no problem letting us go if there is a call. So we pretty much get the daytime covered. Then we have the other volunteers at night."

Gulf Breeze covers between 800 to 825 calls a year, he said, with 60 to 70 percent of those being medical calls.

Holley-Navarre Fire Chief Len Slocum has a partially paid fire department currently, but his district will become a fully paid department with people at the station 24/7 beginning in January 2008. He said times have changed and laws have changed, and it makes having a full service volunteer department impossible.

"It isn't like it used to be, where bosses would just say 'Oh, go fight the fire and come back when you are done.' Volunteers cannot just leave work any more when a call comes," Slocum said.

Slocum has 20 volunteers and four part-time paid firefighters. Beginning in January those four will be full time paid firefighters, and he said they will still use the 20 volunteers.

"We usually have about 2,000 calls a year, with mostly being medical response calls. And now days, to fight a fire legally, and safely, you need at least 15 people on scene, as long as no one is inside needing rescue. Then you need more," Slocum said.

Midway Fire Chief Stephen Demeter said, "It takes every fire department in this south end to fight a fire. No one department can do it alone. That is why this mutual aid agreement is so important. None of us have enough people full time on duty to handle a fire by ourselves. And right now, until some things change, if we get two fires in the south end, the last one to call is going to burn down. It is just that simple." The other three chiefs agreed.

Midway is a fully paid fire district, with 29 firefighters. Of those, nine are usually on duty at one time. "But if everything isn't just right, like someone not showing up, we might go down to only seven available at one time," he said. They handle an average of just over 2,000 calls a year, with most of those being medical response.

Navarre Beach Chief Michael Howard said his department is fully paid. They handle about 300 calls a year, with 108 of those last year being mutual aid across the bridge to help Holley-Navarre. He has two firefighters on duty all the time, 24/7, and altogether his department has seven firefighters, including the chief. He said this mutual aid agreement will be a "hard sell" to his board of commissioners. "They are not in favor of mutual aid," he said. "And they say they are not worried about ISO insurance ratings."

Chief Slocum said he gets at least 20 calls a day from insurance agencies around the country wanting to know what their ISO rating is. "This mutual aid agreement is so important to our ISO," Slocum said.

The agreement will not be absolutely final until each fire commission signs off on it, which will be in November for most.