Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

The Public Safety Committee of Wednesday, March 18 to order at 04:50PM. Roll call, please. Thank you. Alderman. Here. Thank you. Alderman Smith Brown.

Present.

Alright, Karma O'Neil is present. I will entertain a motion for the approval of the agenda.

I'll move to approve the agenda.

Is there a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. I'll entertain a motion to approve minutes from 02/18/2025.

Alright. I'll move to approve those minutes.

There a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Great. I'm very excited to say that today's public safety meeting includes ID 1626, the Annapolis Fire Department update and discussion on activities. If we can please have the chief and anyone else from your department come up to the table, that would be great. If you can turn on your microphones and introduce.

Good evening. Doug Romali, fire chief. To my right is acting deputy chief John Ortley. He's deputy chief of operations. And to his right is acting is deputy chief, Matthew Lopez, who's in charge of our administration and professional standards unit.

Thank you.

We are going to educate you on the Annapolis Fire Department today. We know we have a new public safety committee and thought it would be good, the chair actually asked us to put a presentation together to basically let you know what we do and this will definitely educate you on that. So if you have any questions as we move through it, feel free to ask and we will go with the presentation. So we're just gonna discuss a little bit about the history of our department, the evolution of the department, the way the department looks today. We will talk about challenges of emergency services in a colonial town.

We're actually gonna do some history on some of the major fires in historic district and talk about the sprinkler legislation that was put forth by the council. Just a little bit about prevention strategies and what the department's gonna do to move forward. So with that, you all do know that we are a colonial town here in Maryland. And we sit right on the Severn River which meets the Chesapeake Bay. Several miles of shoreline that goes along with it.

We're within 25 miles of Baltimore and DC. And it was founded in the 1600s. So it's one of the earliest cities in The United States and that provides some unique challenges with all those aspects there as we move through it. And as you know we have streets that were built for horse and buggies and we park on both sides of the street and try to put fire apparatus up and down the street every day. So just a little more with the uniqueness of us. You know we are the capital of the state of Maryland. We house state, county and city government. We have the oldest state house. It's still in continuous legislative use in The United States and was built in the seventeen hundred's. And just a little bit of history there.

Most people don't realize that Annapolis served as the capital of The United States for a year in the seventeen hundreds. But with that, we have a lot of structures in the historic district that George Washington slept here. As you know, we're very proud of the historic city that we have. In the state house itself, George Washington resigned his commission to the Continental Army. He ratified the Treaty of Paris there, which actually made The United States a sovereign nation.

But with that, we talked about the oldest state house still in legislative use and it was built in the seventeen hundreds. And when we have a state house and as you all walk up Main Street and see this beautiful state house, our ladders don't reach the top of it. It's very tall. If you ever get a chance to go up top, it's a great view of not only the Chesapeake Bay but the surrounding areas, but how do we protect a wooden frame structure that is heavy timber that we can't reach? Any ideas?

Bet the chair knows because we were just talking about something like this. They took a historic building and put a sprinkler system in. And this is what we call a deluge system. But it's one of those deals that you know we have the oldest state house in The United States and we would not want to lose that especially under my watch. But the state came in, renovated it, has a state of the art fire alarm system in it, heat detectors.

And when this system activates and they test it yearly, it's something really spectacular to see. It actually looks like the building's on fire because there's mist coming off of it. But that sprinkler system puts out thousands of gallons of water and that's how we protect that State Capitol Building. With that, you know that St. John's College is here. It's the third oldest college in The United States. It's a liberal arts college. It's on 36 acre campus. It sits right on College Creek. Across the fence from them is the United States Naval Academy, which is the second oldest military academy in The United States, built in the eighteen hundreds.

It's got a 338 acre campus known as The Yard. What a lot of people don't realize is that it's the head they have Bancroft Hall there, is the largest dormitory for any college in The United States where over 4,000 midshipmen are housed every day. Now we protect that area with our partners who actually have the jurisdiction there, which is Naval District Washington, but we run on the academy grounds all the time. And then on the North Severn side where the YPs are kept and Navy Station Annapolis on that side, we support those operations over there. But all this brings unique challenges with us.

So we have about a seven minute video we wanna show you, but this will basically show you the evolution of our department. I'm hoping there you go. So you may have noticed a lot of those pictures were from places in all your wards. Then the video basically shows everything that we do within the department but just to go a little bit into it because you saw the evolution from the hand pumper to the sophisticated equipment we have today. But just to show you how far back firefighting goes in the city of Annapolis and how the city actually has provided services to our citizens.

In 1803, the city actually wasn't necessarily city council at the time, I don't even know what they were called, they actually acquired a hand pumper. The city of Annapolis did it. It wasn't a volunteer company, it was a hand pumper. And then over the years, they actually built a firehouse which was right here in this building here. It was attached to this building. The jail used to be in that city also. And then one of the earliest fire companies in the state of Maryland was the Independent Fire Company, which ended up across the street here in the eighteen hundreds. They were actually authorized by the state general assembly. And then when civil war came about, they had to disband. But after that, here comes the evolution of the department itself.

So on West Street there, the Rescue Hose Company was established in eighteen hundreds. That building is now an arcade bar. The building across the street here housed the Independent Fire Company number two. They came back after the Civil War and were reestablished in 1800s. And then Water Witch Hook and Ladder Company on East Street was in the 1800s also.

Just on the outskirts of the city was the Eastport Volunteer Fire Company that started on 2nd Street that was not annexed into the city yet. And then the West Annapolis Fire And Improvement Company was over there where the actual West Annapolis Elementary School is today. They were eventually annexed into the city of Annapolis. But in the early nineteen seventies, West Annapolis decided that they had some concerns with the city of Annapolis and the county took them in and they moved out to Jennifer Road where they built them a new fire station. So they moved out of the city and became a county fire company.

Throughout those years and it dates back to the eighteen hundreds, there were career firefighters in the city of Annapolis. There was actually a paid member for the city of Annapolis who was in charge of taking care of the horses. And that person fed the horses, made sure that when they had a fire call, he hooked the horses up to the steamer and took that down the road. And when they weren't using that, they used the horses for the trash truck. But that was actually a city employee back in the eighteen hundreds.

So it just shows you how far back that we've had career firefighters here. We had a first career fire chief was established in 1964. This was before the establishment of the Anne Arundel County Fire Department. And the two newest stations that we've ever built in the city was the Forest Drive station in the 70s and then in the 80s, early 80s, was a study done and they decided to close all three downtown stations. They wanted to consolidate them into one central firehouse.

That was originally scheduled to be where the Fire memorial is now across from the Treasury Building, but that was prime real estate. And somewhere along the line, the city didn't end up with that property and they moved the fire station out to the Taylor Avenue near the State Police Barracks, which is not a bad location and West Annapolis Fire Company used to be out that way, but it ended up closing all three downtown stations and does sometimes give us challenges because we no longer have a station right here in Downtown Annapolis. But it's important to remember those that came before us and we've had three line of duty desks in the city. Every year on the anniversary of their desks, we go out and do a wreath laying ceremony. But the first one was William Brown from the Wilker Witch Hook and Ladder Company.

He was operating on a fire on Market Street and our Market Space in Fleet Street. It was a shoe store with a house or apartment above it. While he was on a roof of one story building advancing the hose line, he fell off the roof and struck his head. What they thought at that time was a minor injury. He went home that night and brain swelling.

He died from a traumatic brain swelling. It's important to know or just a little bit education here is that this is the first recorded fire death during firefighting activities from a firefighter in Anne Arundel County. So that there was probably some prior to that, but this is the first recorded on in record within our entire county and that was an Annapolis firefighter. In '58, we had a firefighter from the Rescue Hose Company who was operating on a structure fire. He ended up passing away.

He had a heart attack. And then the last fire death we've had in the city of Annapolis was a young 16 year old firefighter. He was a volunteer. There was a warehouse fire out on Virginia Avenue. The end result of that fire, there were about 15 firefighters injured. We had three firefighters that entered one side of the building. They were wearing what we would consider today as self contained breathing apparatus, but they were canister masks. The three of them entered the building. They were later all found unconscious. They were pulled from the building.

They were taken to Anne Arundel Medical Center down here on Cathedral Street. A doctor on scene there, they they actually had toe tags on all three of these individuals. Doctor was able to survive to bring two of those back to life. The young man who was the day from his seventeenth birthday, unfortunately passed away. The two firefighters that actually survived ended up becoming career firefighters in the city of Annapolis and had long careers here with us and are still around today.

They're they're retired, but they were on that scene. But this incident here, actually, we had a career fire chief here already, but the county commissioners got together after this fire and decided that they really need to take a look at county wide fire service. And this fire was actually establishment worth of that commission. And the next year, the Anne Arundel County Fire Department combination department was formed and the career fire chief was made there. So we'll fast forward here just to let you know everything that we deal with all the time.

We do feel it's important that you know about the history of the department and how old the fire department is here. But we are an ISO class one department. It just means independent agencies come in, underwriters agency for insurance companies come in and evaluated us. There's a rating of one to ten, one being outstanding, 10 being very little fire service at all. They look at several aspects of what we do, which includes our water supply here in the city of Annapolis, the number of fire apparatus, our staffing, the dispatch center and community risk reduction and fire investigation services.

So they rate us on that and they give you a score and we are in that one, that top percentage throughout The United States. Now these numbers are a little off. There are a few more Class I fire departments there. There's only two or three here in the state of Maryland and we were one of those. But it's also important to realize that we can't be a Class I department without our partners. Our partners being Public Works. Public Works establishes our water supply here in the city of Annapolis. They maintain the fire hydrants. They make sure the water is flowing every day because of our hydrant system and as good as that is, that helps us there. And then our counterparts with Anne Arundel County who do our fire dispatching for us.

They rate very highly there and all those rankings help us with our class one certification. As you all are aware, all members of our department from firefighter to rank a captain are represented by the Annapolis Professional Firefighters Local nineteen twenty six, which is the local that represents them. We have a good working relationship with them. We still maintain three volunteer fire companies. They are generally support services for us currently.

We have one riding member, but they are very vital to the organization here. The Eastport volunteers own two fire engines that we operate every day. If they didn't have those, the city would have to pick those up and pay for those. So their community support there. They own two special event gators, pickup truck with a plow that obviously this during the snowstorms, you've seen them out on the roads for us because we send them out with our medic units and our engines to plow the streets to make sure we can get to the calls.

Independent Fire Company, operates at the Taylor Avenue Station along with rescue hose. Those were two of the companies that were closed or moved consolidated into one building. They support our operations too. They have a special events gator on order for us that's going to be used for during the races. This was actually a miniature ambulance. You may have seen some of the UTVs that we use now for our special events, but this will be an actual medic unit where you get in back of it and you won't see the patient. The actual stretcher goes in back of that. That's still probably a year out because it takes so long to build, but that's coming. But they support us. We have changed our mission statement with our strategic plan, but this is why we exist.

It's to protect the residents and the visitors of the city of Annapolis by providing prompt and professional emergency medical services, fire protection, and public safety services to safeguard life, property, and the environment. All the services that that video showed you is this is what we provide within the Annapolis Fire Department. It's the men and women of our department that allow us to do all these services because they wear multiple, multiple hats. We 75% of what we do are taking sick and injured people to the hospital. So emergency medical services is the highest part of what we do.

But all these other aspects here are important, and you have to be ready for all of them. As most of you have seen through some of the texts that we've had, we've had three significant fires here in the city in the last two months. So it's not like we don't have fires. We have them and our personnel are there to make aggressive attacks and all three of those structures are still standing and nobody was seriously injured with that. But we have a marine unit, swift water, our explosive services unit, our fire investigators.

We have to investigate every fire that occurs. This is just cross staffed across the duties that they have. They are actually law enforcement officers, bomb techs, have explosive detection canines. Code enforcement does all the building inspections and then we have the public outreach programs. Bike medics are used for special events. They are electric bikes. We improved those over the last few years. The original bikes were donated by the Lions Club and they were from the 1980s. So we were able to get these electric bikes. While the bike medics originally didn't want those, they thought people may make fun of them riding these electric bikes around once they got used to it and knew that they could still pedal.

But it gets them to incident scenes within the crowds very quickly. We also have tactical medics that are signed with the police department SWAT team. We send them out on every high risk incident that they go on. And just like anything else in the fire service, all these services that we provide are probably a result of a significant incident. And the reason we have tactical medics in the city of Annapolis is because we had three police officers shot shot during a raid one day. They were on Clay Street. They were involved in a a raid. They're in the house. They're conducting a search warrant. There was a suspect in the closet that started firing at them.

Three officers were shot. One officer, the bullet got up underneath their vest. Police officers removed the officer from the house and because they were two weeks two blocks from the hospital, they put him in a police car and took him to the hospital. The suspect also got injured during the shooting. The medics arrived, flew that that suspect who was also shot to shock trauma who was in surgery within the hour.

The police officer at the time was sitting in the Anne Arundel Medical Center waiting for a surgeon to come in. So it was after this event that we got with the police department and fire department combined together and we sent tactical medics out on every high risk incident that they have to support their operations. You know of our organization. We're broken into two sections, fire chief and then the operations and the professional standards and administrative side that we talked about. But here's the daily staffing that we run every day.

We have to have 26 people working in the city of Annapolis every single day for a twenty four hour period. So this is the Forest Drive Station. They run an engine company and a medic unit out of that building. The battalion chief is our duty chief is there and then our investigator runs out of that building. Our esports station, there's eight staff members there every single day. Their primary functions is running an engine company. The engines are the units that have water on them, they have hoses on them. Our truck companies as you see up here, they're basically high dollar toolboxes with a lot of ladders on them and a lot of specialized equipment. They're the apparatus you see that have the driver on the front and the back and then a medic unit. So those eight people in that building cross staff multiple units.

So the engine company there, if there's an incident that requires our fireboat, they take that engine and they go down to the fireboat. They get on that fireboat and they handle that call. So the fireboat is not staffed by an independent crew, it's the crew at that station. The ladder truck at that station actually if we run out of medic units and they're in the building when this call comes in, they will actually get off the ladder truck and put another medic unit in service. Our bariatric medic unit is there too and that's for some individuals that need a wider cut and or larger that need to be transported to the hospital.

So we need that capability. It has a lift on that unit. But if that unit is called for, they get off that ladder truck and they they take that. If one of the UTVs or one of the gators is used because somebody is injured in one of our parks and we have to take that all terrain vehicle in the park, they get off the ladder truck and they take that and then the medic unit is staffed the whole time. But those are all the units that are there.

So there are eight people at that station and then there's eight people at Taylor Avenue and they also staff an engine truck and medic unit every day. But that engine company, this is our special ops station. So Eastport is our marine station, Taylor Avenue is our special ops station and they handle hazmat, swift water rescue, confined space rescues, high angle rescues and that. So the engine company, if there's a call for a heavy rescue squad, they have to get off that engine and get on the heavy rescue. The truck company will get off the truck company and they'll take the hazmat unit.

So it's not like these units are all independently staffed and we have people for them. They actually have to take what incident occurs. And basically the best way to think of it is we just handle the first call first and we'll take whatever piece of equipment is needed. And then the fourth station is our combination station, so Indianapolis Neck Peninsula. It's actually owned by Anne Arundel County. It is staffed by both the Annapolis County and Annapolis firefighters. The county staffs the engine in that building. That engine is what we call a tanker pumper. It's because the Annapolis Neck Peninsula is a non hydrant area. Where we have fire hydrants in the city, the peninsula, there's not a water supply down there.

So we need to take more water. So they have the pumper tanker there and we staff the medic unit and the EMS supervisor out of that station. It's also important to know that this is the county dive rescue station. So the divers for Anne Arundel County are based in that station and our medics are part of that dive team and they respond with that. This works very well for us because 60% of these calls are in the city of Annapolis.

A lot of it is that Edgewood Road and Georgetown Road corridor, Benz Drive area. So it works very well and we are continuing to provide the services and this is a good way that the joint services that we have between Anne Arundel County and City of Annapolis. But it's important to know that we operate out of these four stations and we dispatch calls with what they're known as AVLs, so with their automatic vehicle locators. So we will send the closest unit to the call whether it's our unit or the county unit. And that is countywide.

So you'll see our units in Parole, you'll see them in Edgewater, you'll see them in REVA, and you'll also see county units in the city of Annapolis. So if the medic unit at the Eastport station is on a call already, then the unit from the next station down will handle that call. And that happens all day long. We handle over 13,000 emergency responses every year in the city of Annapolis, but that's 13,000 incidents. It's important to realize that a lot of those incidents take multiple units, so there's over 23,000 responses of our units every year.

So it's just something we like to point out and people understand. This is our fifth platoon, which is our day work staff and it houses our chief officers, our EMS supervisors, captains, and training division. And then the fire marshal's office code enforcement side is the ones that do the building inspections. They are housed down here on Gorman Street with planning and zoning inspectors. So it's a one stop shop for permit issues or concerns.

So they are in that building there and they work closely with the building inspectors. We talked about the uniqueness of the city. You're not going to find a city our size with the special events that we run into and that's all because what we talked about earlier, being the state capital. We have the Naval Academy here. We have St. John's College here. It's important to recognize that the stadium is not on federal property. Navy Stadium is actually located within the city of Annapolis. It's owned by the Navy Athletic Association. So anytime there's a special event held there, we know we have 41,000 residents in the city.

There's probably another 40,000 Indianapolis Neck Peninsula. We have a home football game that's very popular. We're bringing in another 35,000 to 40,000 people there. So the city of Annapolis has to provide primary service, public safety, that's a police, fire, emergency management helps with coordinating these establishments and our counterparts with the Naval District Washington and Anne Arundel County. And I tell people all the time, call in the city of Annapolis, you're basically not gonna know if it's an Annapolis firefighter or paramedic, county paramedic firefighter or Navy District Washington firefighter or paramedics except for the patches on our shoulders or the color of our fire apparatus and our turnout gear.

We are so intertwined and intermingled. We train together on a regular basis. We operate under the same guidelines, standard operating procedures, and it works systematically. But we don't have it. So if we have a structure fire in the city of Annapolis, we have to send at least 25 people to that call.

We'd only have 25 people working and they're on multiple units and four of those units are medic units. So anytime we have a fire in the city of Annapolis, you're gonna see a mutual aid company coming into the city of Annapolis. But it works well. These are just some of the events that are held at the stadium and these are just some of the highlighted events that are bringing up large crowd. With that, you know that the city of Annapolis has the largest boat shows in the city in the state or actually in The United States in water boat shows.

So with that, we bring in another 30,000 visitors. It's important to realize that on multiple occasions, at least one Navy home game is during the boat shows. So as you can see, we're bringing a lot of people into the city of Annapolis and we have to provide those safety to those. You ask the fire chief what keeps you up at night. Well, special events like this sometimes can. We prepare for it. You see all those boats there, boats are fiberglass. Fiberglass, once it catches fire, burns like gasoline and spreads very rapidly. We are bringing in sort of like our housing community where we have a small area, seven miles, seven point whatever miles, but we have a lot of density in houses together. It's the same with our special events here.

So our projected fire volume there could be high. So we take these very seriously and we plan for these events accordingly. And just some of the other special events that you're very familiar with. We had one last week, Saint Patty's Day Parade. You saw the number of people that are in town, but we're very proud of the special events and what comes into town.

But also being the state capital, we know it also brings sometimes First Amendment protests and these are just some examples of that. One of my favorite is the air show every year. But it's just important to realize that as we bring in these special events, have to bring in additional staffing to maintain it because we have to maintain our daily staffing levels every day to handle the day to day operations. Let's talk about his some historic fires in the historic district. For whatever reason, the city of Annapolis, when we decide to have a major fire in the historic district, it always seems to be around a holiday.

This one here is 12/09/1997, India Palace Restaurant. Streets are filled with a lot of shoppers. To the right of this building, it was either to the right or left, was Christmas Spirit, which was a business there that sold Christmas ornaments and plenty of Christmas gifts. So there's a lot of people in town. People are in the Indian Palace restaurant enjoying their dinner when people from outside came in and said, hey, there's smoke coming out of your building.

People inside didn't even know. We dispatch units there. Our first chief that gets there looks down the alley, sees a little lazy fire coming out around the hood system from the kitchen and thinks they have a a very small fire. But I can tell you multiple, multiple hours later, all these businesses were destroyed. Over $5,000,000 worth of damage was conducted because of this fire.

These are just some pictures of it. The picture to the left, that ladder truck you see there, the ladder was originally up. They are moving that ladder truck because the flames are getting too intense and we did not want to lose our apparatus there, so we had to reposition. The one on the right is actually a view from the State House property. So looking right at the fire on Main Street there, this is the State House side of it.

We had crews that went in this that door there, smoke coming out of this building, they had no heat conditions, heavy smoke. We were probably pretty lucky because the fire was burning underneath them in void spaces and they couldn't locate that fire. But this shows you how stubborn a fire can be in these historic structures. This is just a couple more pictures. But the one on the right, if you look just to the left of the ladder truck there, that two story building, I'm told that that is the oldest buildings standing in the city of Annapolis.

We are proud that that building was not destroyed by this fire and was not damaged by that fire. But after that, city council had a resolution put together. They had a fire safety committee which came together to look at fires in historic districts. Now this is in 1998. 21 recommendations were established.

Some of that included adopting NFPA standards. We were to hire a fire protection engineer, some tax credits for monitoring sprinkler systems in that. We suggested funding for underground wiring to hire an additional inspector and fill the vacancies within the department. While these came out, how many do you think actually got it established or actually went forward? So very few.

We were at the time, we hired a part time fire protection engineer. The actual inspector, which was supposed to go to the fire marshal's office, ended up going to planning and zoning. They made a life safety inspector out of it, which was needed. But it just took some time. These suggestions were out there, but as you know, it's like everything else and also considering the parking on narrow streets.

I'm sure you all hear it all the time. But fire department comes in and talks about reducing parking so that we can get apparatus in there. Fire safety, we think we're taking somebody's birthday away if you're taking parking away in the city of Annapolis. So it's it's a struggle for us all the time. But some of the aspects of the resolution were brought forward, but it was very few. So then what happens? We have a few more fires on Main Street. This one happened early morning hours. This is near Acme Bar and Grill just down the street there. It's important for our people to realize, you can look at this picture, you see a fire on the 2nd Floor, well, they all we send crews on the 1st Floor here and they're all looking to get access to that 2nd Floor.

You think there's stairs going in that 2nd Floor? Not inside the building. It's around the back of the building, and that's what maintained the 2nd And 3rd Floors there because it's been chopped up. But these are just some other fires that happened in the historic district. So we went from '98 to 2005, and what happened right around Christmas time, Black Friday. Big shopping day in the city of Annapolis. Zachary's, which was a jewelry store here that's still here today. It's a family owned store in the city. They are going to close for business. One of their employees starts smelling smoke right around 08:00 at night.

The end result of this fire, Zachary's was destroyed. Ale Goodies was severely damaged by fire. Main Street ice cream was severely damaged by fire and was over $3,000,000 worth of dollars lost to the buildings. The picture on the left is one that when the firefighters first arrived, you can just see some lazy smoke coming out of there. But if you notice, there's no there was no windows on the 2nd And 3rd Floors there. I believe this business used to be a furniture store and that was used for storage prior to that. But unfortunately, this fire progressed. We ended up losing that building. Starbucks sits there today. As you remember, it became a park.

We put so much water in that building that there were diamond rings flowing down the street that our firefighters were picking up, putting to the side to get back to the jewelers, but we know that several pieces of jewelry were lost just because it was flowing out because there was just not enough time for this crew for the staff to take that away. But we had that fire which was significant. Then we have the Annapolis Yacht Club established in eighteen hundreds, so it's a very old establishment. It's got over 2,000 members. Guess again, right around Christmas time.

They are preparing for the boats parade. So we have a special event coming. The boat crew was going out. We sent the crew to the boat to go out for the boats parade for public safety. They were actually in the store right there on 6th Street in Royal Farm store. Somebody came in. The firefighters are standing right there. It says Annapolis Fire Department right on the back of their shirts. They got their radios on. Somebody came in and told the merchant behind this counter, hey, the yacht club's on fire.

Didn't even tell the firefighters that were there, but this was the end result there. As they were preparing for it, the 2nd Floor, there was a fire. There was an occupant that started to fight the fire. Unfortunately, the fire just progressed out of control. We were lucky to the fact that they were preparing for the boat break and the people were not there yet. But as you can see that this was a significant fire in the historic district that went on. And this one was caused by Christmas tree just in case you were wondering. I just want to show you that tree there. This is an artificial tree by the way. But with that, there was thoughts that we had to do something.

The council thought they had to do something about the fires in Historic District because they continued to happen. Every chief seems to have to have a fire in Historic District. I was approved to be fire chief 11/01/2019, and on November 25, I had one on Duke Of Gloucester Street here that totally gutted the interior of a historic building down the street here. So nobody gets out of that as a fire chief. But from that came the ordinance that the council passed which requires sprinklers, retrofitting sprinklers in the historic district on Main Street.

This was through some public education. We actually brought the sprinkler trailer in here, had it set up across the street to show set two rooms on fire within the trailer, one without a sprinkler system, one with the sprinkler system to show show how important that is. The council agreed with that. The original ordinance was gonna was being pushed forward during COVID and they backed off on it at that time because everything else that was going on did not think it was appropriate for that time. The businesses were already suffering.

But after COVID, this ordinance came about. So the ordinance is in effect now. It has been revised, but it requires the buildings on Main Street that do not have sprinkler systems to have that by a certain time period. The council has revised that. So I think the time period is now 2030 or 2032. It was originally had to be done within five years. It is important to note that a lot of the business owners has not they haven't done anything about this currently. So we will continue to work this and move it forward. But the the sprinkler ordinance is there. It's in the city code and will continue to be moved forward.

The cadet program. So council members had talked to me for years about how do we get some people from our community involved in public safety. We were going back and forth on how to do that, but we had the privilege to join with the Maryland Department of Services and Civic Innovation who has a program. This is the second or third program and it's basically for internships throughout the state. And it's a nine month program that you partner with the state and they pay these individuals.

It's they're being paid $15 an hour, they're meaning minimal ways, but you're paying them to trade. It was set up for for people that were 18 to 24 years old that may not may or may not be going to college to have a trade. So we were able to partner with the city, the local 1926, University of Maryland, Maryland Fire Rescue Institute, and put this program together. And I can tell you that it's been very successful, and this is unique. This is the first time it's occurred in the state of Maryland. And we were putting these we started with 10 cadets. We were putting them through a career fire school. They are Monday through Friday going through the same career fire school that anybody else goes to. They are getting the physical fitness aspect. They're getting it all.

But they went through an application process. They were vetted. They were interviewed. They went through backgrounds. They had physicals. We hired 10. We started the academy class, and this is just some pictures of some of the training that's going on now. They all had just completed their EMT training. I didn't want a program that we train these individuals and they didn't have an opportunity for a job afterwards. So we actually added airport firefighting to this because we know there's a couple jurisdictions within the state of Maryland that if for some reason we don't have openings that these individuals will come out with national certifications.

They will have airport firefighting. Navy District Washington will pick them up with these national certifications. Carroll County will pick them up with national certifications. I hope to be able to pick up some of them, but this core group of individuals is unique and it's very proud of these people from our communities that are going through it. This is just some more pictures of it. They're going through their hazmat training. Bottom left is their EMT training. In the middle you can see where they are up there with the Maryland State Police helicopter and the Medevac helicopter learning about that. But the program has been very successful. So moving forward, as you know, we've got the strategic plan that was put out there.

We will continue to work with our core group. We had a core group of individuals within the department that had started it. We brought in a third party vendor to help us with it. We're very proud of the strategic plan and it's helping us focus on the next five years. Committees are being put together to continue to evaluate our programs. Right now we know that the peak time medic unit is probably the highest priority we have currently. We feel that that's needed. If you have any questions at the end of this, my deputies here can talk to you about unit hour utilization and how busy the units actually are and what all that means. But we will also be looking at our staffing levels as you have been pointing out. It's been pointed out to you on multiple occasions that we don't necessarily meet the national standards.

The national standards suggest four person crews on engine and truck companies. We meet the exception of that standard because we sent so many people to the call at the time. I will tell you as the fire chief that I'd love to see four person staffing, but it's figuring out how we can do that. As you heard earlier, EMS is what we do at 75% of our resources or responses and our current need is that peak time medic unit because that's where our responses are. It is also important to realize that there's been a couple of line of duty deaths in the fire service in the state of Maryland over the last several years.

One of which was in Frederick County and one in Howard County. And what came out of that was four person crews and both of those jurisdictions have gone a four person's crews on that along with some other avenues. But those fires were very similar in nature where some firefighters went in the 1st Floor and ended up in the basement into the fire and unfortunately didn't survive. But that's one of the guidelines. So we know that four person crews are important to us.

It's important to the safety of our crews. It's just a matter of how we can do it and still be fiscally responsible for the citizens that we serve. Fleet maintenance is always a concern and that's part of our strategic plan in working with facilities and fleet maintenance. I know the chair has heard it before, but for the rest of the committee there, it takes three to four years to build a fire engine. So to build a pumper, it takes three to four years.

What we paid $500,000 for back in 2019 is now over $1,000,000 and it's taken four years to build. These medic units here, these are the two newest medic units that are being added to our fleet. You can see medic 48 on the top that just went in service. It's at the Annapolis NEXT Station. This was a cost effective way to get a new unit.

Here was we took an old unit, we took the box off the back of it and put it on a new chassis and made it a new unit. As you can see that PO was cut in 2024 and that unit just went in service within the last two weeks. The unit below that was ordered a year prior to that. That's what it looks like today and they are going out next week to do a final inspection on that. And I bring this up because we have seven medic units in the city of Annapolis.

Our goal is five years as a prime time or frontline unit, two years as reserve, and then we basically get rid of them because I can tell you we run the wheels off of these things. They're operated all day long. So if they have a 150,000 miles on them, engine miles, have over 300 and some thousand because you have to keep that unit running to keep the air condition going, electronics in it, keep everything charged in it. So by the time we are done with the medic unit, it basically is not useful for anybody as a medic unit. So with that timeline, we should be replacing one unit a year and it's hard to even keep up with that.

But when it takes two to three years to do it, it's hard to stay on a replacement budget. So that's just one of the challenges that we run into. The fireboat is being built. This is the new fireboat that will be replacing the fireboat at the Eastport Station. That's the current status of it.

We plan on having that boat in service or at least delivered to the city in the middle of summer or around September time. So this will be a state of the art fireboat and we look to get another twenty to twenty five years out of this boat like we did the current boat. And we thank the council for their support on all those units. And just lastly here, Eastport Volunteer Fire Company, we told you how important they are to our organization in supporting us. They have recently signed an agreement to buy a $1,100,000 pumper for Eastport Fire Station that they are paying for with community donations and grants.

They're going to be paying for it over the next several years, but this will allow the city to focus on other fleet replacement items and not have to replace the engine at the Esports Station because they are actually doing that. Now for you, we do have an agreement with them. There is part of the agreement when we're running the units that are operated by them. There's a small portion in the city in our fire department budget that gets goes to them that helps them make that payment every year. But I just felt that that was important to see this year that they purchased a 1,100,000 fire engine.

It's going take three years to build, but that will be going in at Eastport Fire Station and it's being paid for by the volunteers in the community. Chief, you got more to add? No, sir. I've been talking an awful lot more than I ever talk, but we can answer any questions you have. But we do feel it was important that you saw where we came from to where we are today.

And you do have the best bang for the buck when it comes to the men and women of Indianapolis Fire Department. Know that we are a big part of the operating budget and that the majority of ours is is that it's salaries and benefits. So 90 some percent of our budget is salary and benefits. And that's for us to get fire engines and medic units on the street every day. So our actual operating budget is less than $3,000,000 It's around $2,000,000 to operate those four fire stations and keep this stuff in service every day.

And like I said before and I can't say it enough, it's the men and women of our department as dedicated they are and the hats that they wear that allow us to provide all those services you saw from the basic running an EMS call to fire call to the special ops calls to the bomb squad to the marine unit. It's it's the just men and women that make it so good. And you saw in the video, all those fires were within the city of Annapolis. So we will continue to have fires and that's what they deal with every day. While we don't have a fire every day, that is what they're here for and we're prepared to do.

Thank you so much. That was really exactly what we needed.

It's a lot. I

have a couple questions and I believe my colleagues have a couple questions. My first question is, I get this all the time and I know that you and I have talked about it, but my neighbor calls, he's having a chest issue, believes he's having a heart attack and three vehicles come, an EMT unit, a fire truck, and another truck. Why is that? Can you talk through that?

So all the calls are prioritized and the information that's given to the dispatcher dictates what we respond to the call with. Somebody with chest pains is gonna require at least five people to be on that call. Nobody ever gets sick or injured on the 1st Floor. Everybody's always on the 2nd And 3rd Floor, so they have to be brought out of that structure. A medic unit only has two people on it and they there are paramedics and our EMTs that are on there.

So if we have to carry anybody out of anything besides the 1st Floor where there's no steps, we need additional people on the scene there. So typically the engine companies dispatched to that call whether it's the engine or ladder truck, it's because they are the closest unit to the call. We want to get somebody there quickly. We didn't talk about our response times earlier, but our response time meet or exceed the national standards here in the city of Annapolis. We get people to we get our staff to calls very quickly after a 911 call is dispatched.

And we're very proud of that. But that's by sending that fire engine to that call. Everybody on that engine company or that truck company or even in a staff car are a minimum of an EMT level. So everybody is medically trained. And then you can go into the paramedics that have higher training. They can give more drugs and that type of stuff. But it's because of that type of call and the number of people we have there. And it's not we just don't have enough staff to say, okay, we'll three people in every medic unit because those people have to come from somewhere. And it's just it's best for us to send that engine company because once they're no longer needed, they're available for the next call. If it's a cardiac arrest, we have to have at least six people in there with two ALS providers and a supervisor.

So the EMS supervisor goes to all priority calls. So that's the that vehicle you're talking about. It's typically a pickup truck or an SUV and that's the EMS supervisor who has some other advanced skills also, but that's the EMS supervisor that responds to that call. But that's it. It depends on the call. So if it's somebody that just has the flu, you won't see that response. But it's all in what the dispatchers get. And if they have chest pains or if it's a priority call, you're gonna get at least five people in that incident.

Good. Thank you very much for that. My other question is, you talked about like your admin staff, yourself, your chiefs. Do you work on a rotating schedule or is it Monday through Friday?

So the admin staff is typically Monday through Friday.

And then the

There's a duty chief working every day that works a twenty four hour shift. And as we talked about earlier that we we send 20 some people to a structure fire, we require two chiefs on every structure fire. So during the day when one of the day work chiefs are there, they will provide us the second chief. But if those chiefs aren't available, we will get a chief from Anne Arundel County or Naval District Washington on that call.

Alright. And a typical schedule for EMT or whatever, like they're on twenty four hours you said?

They work a twenty four hour shift and then they're off for seventy two hours. So they're on a forty two hour work week. It averages out to a forty two hour work week. Interesting.

Okay. Thank you. Those are my questions.

They're staffed twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Did you say you had questions?

Was there any I know you mentioned it a little earlier. Was there any legislation that you had in mind for us to move forward on particularly as it regards the standards that the country has set versus what we currently have?

So right now I don't believe we have any proposed legislation that we need to come forward currently. We will be updating the city code with some of the fire code regulations that's in there because standards have changed and what's in the current city code don't meet the current standards for our inspectors. So there will be some highlights there. As for the sprinkler ordinance, we'll just watch that currently. Like I said, most of the business owners have not taken any advantage of that.

I'm guessing they're gonna wait until the last minute to see how we handle it. But yeah. And as for the NFPA standard, we'll continue to to look at that and just look for the council support as we try to increase the staffing. But we all know that that's a fiscal note that's related to that. And our firefighters know that too. The union knows that that that this can't happen overnight, this can't happen over a year, and it probably can't happen over four years. But I think for them, they would just like to see a plan as how we're going to address these concerns that continually rise within the community and with our staffing levels.

Great, thank you. Anything else? That's good. Anything from you? Alright, it was so comprehensive that you didn't get a lot of questions. Thank you. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this and I'm hoping that those that watch this or listening really pay attention because I always have questions about fire departments, the operations, where they're coming from, your Oh my goodness, I can't think of the words. Working with the other departments in the county and naval support. Oh yes, he's got another question.

Alright, so if someone's interested in volunteering or supporting, maybe doing a tour of some sorts of any of our departments, what would you offer to them?

So anybody who wants to volunteer their time, they they can call our headquarters office and we can direct them. If they want a career in the fire service, we'll have one of our recruiters reach out to them And then we'll direct them to somebody who wants to volunteer their time to the appropriate volunteer fire company that can help support it. And sometimes, even we even go even farther with that if it's the fire service isn't what they're looking for, but emergency management needs some help there, we'll direct them that way. They have several units or that they tie into. One of them is a county group that they're volunteers that help traffic control and parades and that type of stuff. So we'll point to people in the right direction. At least get them talking to the right people if they wanna volunteer their time.

Great. Thank you. I really appreciate you guys coming today. Thank you so much.

You all said so much. You got anything? Sure. Okay.

It will be out.

Great. With that being completed, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Oh good of the order? Sure. The chief, you got it?

No for you. Okay.

Thank you guys.

Yes. Maybe in light, I'm not certain if we, maybe we do offer this, but is there ever a time where we invite our union members to come and speak before Is

that not? Nope. And I'll tell you why.

Is that because of Yeah. Okay I understand. I wanted to make sure. Okay. I will That's everything.

Alright. I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

I'll move to adjourn.

Second. I second. Alright. All in favor say aye. Aye.

Thank you.