#1 For this assignment, I am actually going to somewhat summarize the paper I submitted last week, as I am very lucky to be a part of a fire department that just recently began to take this area of Fire Prevention seriously, and have been very blessed to be a part of spearheading these efforts. (Stuart, June 2019) Now as I mentioned in my paper last week, Collegeville has a little bit of an issue with deriving our exact information, as we do not have a recognized census area. Instead, we utilized the help of the US Post Office and the San Joaquin County Office of Elections to perform our own similar accounting of everyone we could in 2010 and will be repeating the same effort via the same means in 2020 as we found out we will still not be considered our own census area for the next one either. In 2010, we were able to identify the District held about 265 residents who had an adjusted average income of $26,000 a year. The overwhelming majority of whom were some manner of agricultural worker, which is not surprising given the rural and farming nature of the majority of our District. Throughout the succeeding years since 2010, we have identified many changes to the community. We had a prison built by the State of California within our borders. We had a house convert into a residential board and care facility that houses patients who need long term care. We had the population of the elementary school rise as younger families repopulated its rolls. And we had an increase in the number of responses within the district to wildland fires due to the drought that plagued the State. (CFPD, 2010) (Stuart, June 2019) (Stuart, May 2019) As we have moved forward with this effort (I oversaw and authored the Community Risk Assessment which was finalized just this past May 2019), we began our efforts by reaching out to the board and care due to a call we ran that possibly would have resulted in the full evacuation of all of their patients from a fire situation. We spent a few weeks working directly with them in helping to supply their facility with code compliant fire detection systems and devices, as well as worked to help them establish their emergency planning and practice it to ensure they were truly prepared for an emergency. We will continue to check up on them as they have now taken these efforts over. Our main strategy in reaching them was the presentation of the lessons that could have been learned the hard way from the incident of the small fire in their building. We capitalized on these teachable moments to help them realize the issues they had and the insufficiency within their training as a staff. This helped us then work with them to solve the problems as mentioned. (Stuart, May 2019) We will next be concentrating on the agricultural population of the District. There are so many agricultural materials within these farms that pose the threat of a hazardous materials incident, that we intend to not only work on community education programs reg ...

1. #1
For this assignment, I am actually going to somewhat
summarize the paper I submitted last week, as I am very lucky
to be a part of a fire department that just recently began to take
this area of Fire Prevention seriously, and have been very
blessed to be a part of spearheading these efforts. (Stuart, June
2019)
Now as I mentioned in my paper last week, Collegeville has a
little bit of an issue with deriving our exact information, as we
do not have a recognized census area. Instead, we utilized the
help of the US Post Office and the San Joaquin County Office
of Elections to perform our own similar accounting of everyone
we could in 2010 and will be repeating the same effort via the
same means in 2020 as we found out we will still not be
considered our own census area for the next one either. In 2010,
we were able to identify the District held about 265 residents
who had an adjusted average income of $26,000 a year. The
overwhelming majority of whom were some manner of
agricultural worker, which is not surprising given the rural and
farming nature of the majority of our District. Throughout the
succeeding years since 2010, we have identified many changes
to the community. We had a prison built by the State of
California within our borders. We had a house convert into a
residential board and care facility that houses patients who need
long term care. We had the population of the elementary school
rise as younger families repopulated its rolls. And we had an
increase in the number of responses within the district to
wildland fires due to the drought that plagued the State. (CFPD,
2010) (Stuart, June 2019) (Stuart, May 2019)
As we have moved forward with this effort (I oversaw and
authored the Community Risk Assessment which was finalized

2. just this past May 2019), we began our efforts by reaching out
to the board and care due to a call we ran that possibly would
have resulted in the full evacuation of all of their patients from
a fire situation. We spent a few weeks working directly with
them in helping to supply their facility with code compliant fire
detection systems and devices, as well as worked to help them
establish their emergency planning and practice it to ensure they
were truly prepared for an emergency. We will continue to
check up on them as they have now taken these efforts over.
Our main strategy in reaching them was the presentation of the
lessons that could have been learned the hard way from the
incident of the small fire in their building. We capitalized on
these teachable moments to help them realize the issues they
had and the insufficiency within their training as a staff. This
helped us then work with them to solve the problems as
mentioned. (Stuart, May 2019)
We will next be concentrating on the agricultural population of
the District. There are so many agricultural materials within
these farms that pose the threat of a hazardous materials
incident, that we intend to not only work on community
education programs regarding the prevention of and emergency
planning for HazMats, but we are also using the data we
uncovered (Over 80% of the properties in the District contain
some manner of Hazardous Materials that is not commonly
found in the 'typical' residential household.) to seek the grants
that will allow our little department to become better equipped
and trained for such a response from the Awareness and
Technician levels of HazMat certification within the fire
service. Our strategy as of now will be to lay out a series of
educational opportunities combined with the offering of free
risk assessments of their ranches and farms to identify these
hazards specific to them and outline a plan together for
mitigating an emergency; all of which we will then turn around
and use to pre-incident plan for the same kind of response to
that property. (Stuart, May 2019)

3. If we continue to enjoy success overall, we will be taking the
best practices and lessons learned to the many small fire
districts like our own throughout the counties of San Joaquin
and Stanislaus. For such a large area, there are actuall y only a
few larger fire departments in comparison to the numerous
smaller ones run just like ours. We are hoping to get our own
house in order and then spread the word on how we did it with
such limited resources.
Gus
REFERENCES
USFA. (June 1997)
Socioeconomic Factors & the Incidence of Fire
(Retrieved from
https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/socio.pdf)
FEMA
CFPD Board. (January 2010)
Local Census Compliment
(Collegeville, CA) Collegeville Fire Protection District (CFPD)
Stuart, L. (May 2019)
Community Risk Assessment
(Collegeville, CA) Collegeville Fire Protection District (CFPD)
Stuart, L. (June 2019)
Week Four Assignment
(Farmington, CA) APUS
#2

4. This weeks topic was interesting to try to research and find
information on. Honestly, I am not 100 percent sure what I am
about to talk about even hits the point however, I think it comes
close to analyzing risk reduction within a community and how
the fire department is dealing with/or trying to deal with.
Risk management is a huge component in the emergency
response forces that serve every community around the United
States. I found an article by Daniel C. Vock called “Fire
Departments Struggle to Meet New Demands” (2018). In this
particular article it talks about new risks and emergency
operations that were tended to by the Charlottesville, Va. Fire
Department. For instance, this department has had to deal with
an aircraft crash in a deep wooded area, which was hard to
locate and gain access to, performing water rescues fr om floods,
train derailments (with Congress members on board), and
tending to white supremacist rallies.
The workloads placed upon the fire department tend to continue
to grow each and every year and the risk may stay the same or
alter slightly based on population growth, weather changes,
poverty levels, risky violent protests, etc. Of course when the
population grows and/or ages the risk with elderly grows as
well. Vock states these various changes in responses “requires
training and planning for new dangers such as civil disturbances
or active shooters.” Therefore, there may be a need to reach the
community to develop bilateral cooperation to help education
the population on new and present hazards in support or fire
department objectives/tactics.
For instance, many areas around the globe have fallen victim to
active shooter situations and educating the public on procedures
to take when involved in a situation can help reduce the number
or victims. I would make an assumption that this community
will eventually have to make this address, if it is not
already. Additionally, the same concept can/may apply to water

5. rescue situations and educating the public on how to avoid
water hazards from flood waters and that it may take a full
community commitment to avoid the hazards of these basic two
types of emergency situations. I cannot say for sure if these
situations are presently taking place to remedy/reduce or if it
is/may be a complicated topic to address with the community in
regards to gaining “buy-in”.
One major piece I read in this article and what popped out
immensely was “fire departments in the United States
Responded to 35.3 million calls. That’s more than three times
as many as in 1981, even though the U.S. populations increased
by only 42%.” Frankly, these numbers do not generally make
sense and something has changed along the way, perhaps
behaviors!? Another key item mentioned was fire related calls
decreased by more than half over that same time span.
The fire departments around the globe have transitioned from
fire fighting forces to more of an emergency medical response
force as the majority of calls are not medical related. To me,
fire departments are well tuned into risk management,
prevention, and mitigation of a wide variety of emergency
response calls. The key to reducing negative trends is training,
education, community involvement, and active preparation for
what is likely rather than assuming the “it will never happen to
me” mantra. You hear it time and time again that when
something bad happens to someone they mention they never
thought that would happen to them but when it does, they wish
they would have prepared ahead. Plan, train, get community
involved in reducing unfavorable trends.
David
References:
Vock. Daniel, C. (2018) “Fire Departments Struggle to Meet

6. New Demands” Accessed July 3 2019.
https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-
firefighters-firehouse.html