Tuesday, February 11th Brian Montgomery, Winnfield Fire Chief, spoke to Kiwanis. He brought Captain Charles Long and Captain Ben Murphy to the meeting with him. Montgomery started at the Fire Department as a volunteer in 1994 and was hired as employee in 1996. He became chief in 2015.
He was very happy to share the good news that the Fire Department has achieved a class 2 fire rating. This is a classification of the Property Insurance Association of Louisiana which evaluates fire departments based on a grading scale. The rating affects the fire insurance premium costs. The ratings are determined every 5 years. The rating is 1 being best to 10 being worst. The Winnfield Fire Department has had a class 3 rating for many years and a lot of work went into now being a class 2. They are well within the boundary between class 2 and class 3 so they should be able to maintain class 2. Once the 5 years is over and the rating is established the process starts all over again.
There are 3 categories that go into the rating. The first is dispatching. Dispatchers must have training and be certified. The time between when the 911 call is placed and the time help is dispatched is very important. The second category is the fire department. All structure fires require 2 engines and a ladder truck to respond. They also receive credit for reserve pumpers and reserve ladder trucks which they have. The ladder truck can pump 2000 gallons of water per minute. When fighting a fire the amount of water you can put on that fire matters. It cost $5000 to outfit one firefighter and when you add an air supply it goes up to $9000. They are also graded on deployment analysis which is the time from the call until they reach the destination. On-duty staff has increased to an average of 4. At the present time there are 10 full-time employees and they are looking for one more. There are only 5 active volunteers with a possibility of 3 more. The last category is water supply. There are a few areas in town where the water lines are too small (4 inch) so the Fire District 3 will send a water truck to back them up. But this is considered a deficiency.
Training is very important and they do a lot of it. They respond to all 911 emergency medical calls. Because they usually are there before the ambulance they have EMTs and Paramedics who can stabilize patient until the ambulance arrives.
The budget for the Winnfield Fire Department is between $700,000 and $725,000 per year. The last new fire truck purchases cost $635,000. Salaries make up 75% of the budget although firefighters do not make a great salary. They can increase their starting salary with different certifications. Most employees have a secondary job and they can do that because of their working schedule.
Montgomery was very gracious to answer questions and respond to comments throughout his presentation.
Kiwanis very much appreciates the work the Fire Department does and the benefit that the class 2 rating will have on insurance costs for the city.