the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b m c or the town of belmont b m c welcomes your comments ca belmont fire department represents one of the months from front line st responders whether it be a personal emergency involving an emergency health issue or a home or business fire severe weather requiring an emergency response the fire department is there one danger with having the fire department be so ubiquitously present is that we might start to take them for granted to make sure we don't do that i've invited  fire chief david for zell to be a guest today chief thanks for coming good morning thank you chief before we really get started talking about the department can you give us an introduction to yourself you're about my tony and right yes i'm a  generation firefighter my dad was on the apartment which kind of led me in that direction i started on the fire department thirty three years ago as a fire alarm operator answering the calls dispatching the equipment and force so the department is authorized strength right now is fifty four dollars it is four of us that work administrative days that myself the assistant chief fire prevention officer in the training officer the remaining fifty members of which there are forty seven males and three females are assigned to four individual groups so on a rotating basis they work every th day and they work a twenty four hour shift so they start their shift at seven thirty in the morning and work till seven hundred and thirty the next morning and are firefighters assigned to a particular fire stations we have to fire stations one on either side of the tracks you know do they do they always work out of the same station the majority of the firefighters work from the same station every shift they work so that headquarters at two hundred and ninety nine propellor road in station two at lenox street at two hundred and ninety nine propeller road the headquarters station we have one engine pumper that has three personnel on it we have the rescue ambulance with two personnel on it and the shift commander who operates an s u v that's specially equipped at station two we have an engine company with three members on it and the ladder company operates out of that station with two members on it so they are assigned to those specific companies and there are people that will rotate in to fill in shifts if there is sickness or vacation or other reasons of personnel or and even in asking now last question i heard me make an assumption which i don't know if it sound correct or not that i referred to which side of the tracks you're on is they had a meaningful distinction or is that just something people talk about people like me talk about it was a deciding factor on station location we do have a railroad tracks that bisect the town the station on this side of the tracks where we are on the problem road side actually covers about forty percent of the area of the town but does about sixty percent of the responses and it's the reverse on the other side but with  limited crossing points of the railroad tracks it means that we need stations on both sides in order to meet the n f p a standards of having a four minute response now does people talk about being a firefighter  as though it's a generic label does everybody do everything outside of administration does everybody do everything or do people have assigned roles so  unlike larger departments where you may be on assigned to a ladder truck and that's what all you do your whole career communities mid size departments like belmont and smaller you have to be the jack of all trades you have to be able to run the pump stretch the hoses throw the ladders do rescue do we amass we do everything in all of our members across trained if you talk about you mentioned that you've been chief for fifteen years and been in the evolved from horse drawn apparatus we are still putting predominately water on the fire one of the things that's happened with the fire nature or the nature of fires and how they burn as we have dollars times hotter than the natural materials used to have tens of minutes to get out of the house safely when a fire starts now you have less than three minutes to make it out the house before the house no with the materials has also come in increase of cancers within firefighters and things like that so there is a movement now to make sure that we are treating a fire after a fire almost like a hazmat event so the firefighters will be cleaned off and they are get quitman will be taken away and cleaned before they are allowed to reuse it again because the environments a ton more toxic and fifty years ago i'd like to go back through that the timeline because i think the timeline you just laid out is pretty remarkable i've never ever thought about it but you know you mentioned a four minute response time is a standard set by the national fire protection association referred to as the n f p a so the town of belmont  communication center gets a call you have four minutes to respond for from the time where it's actually broken up they they have a certain amount of time to answer the call dispatch the call then we have what's turn out time so they have the firefighters have sixty seconds to get from whatever they're doing in the station on the truck ready to go once they're ready to go and they're rolling they have four minutes to make it from the station to the call and it depending on time of day that's influenced traffic we all know what is the traffic so that slows us down weather can slow us down but our goal is ninety percent of the time making it there within four minutes or less from the time we actually start rolling and then she you get to a location of course not all fires are house fires but you have three minutes you said two so if it were or if it were a house fire in most cases now we are arriving either in its very incipient stage because people have smoke detectors and they forgot their item or they they realize what's going on and they call us immediately and we respond and we catch it right away the problems that we have nowadays is that there's often a delay three hundred and four thousand and fifty years ago one parent a one party in the house worked there was usually somebody's home so during the day they might spot something and attend to it quicker now with multiple family members working nobody being home when we usually find out about a fire that occurs like during the middle of the day a lot of times it's a neighbor or somebody passing by that has seen smoke coming out the house or actual visible flames and by that time that fire has progressed well beyond the incipient stage and in order to shave time is it just repetition and you have to be you can't do something then redo it you have to know exactly what you're going to do and when you're going to do it now you're going to do it there's a question in there somewhere but so every fire is different no two fires of the same so it's  hard to say that there's a cut and dry process to extinguish the fire what we do have a certain objectives we want to make sure that life safety is paramount and primary and then it's a you know getting the water lines in establishing ventilation that's when we we call it ventilation it's breaking the windows it's allowing the hot gases out of the building allowing us to get in getting a supply line from the hydrant from the nearest hydrant to give us a continuous water supply because we only carry five hundred gallons on the truck and again if we're flowing water that's a little over three minutes of water we can flow from the truck and then we're out of water so within that three minutes of least we start flowing water we need to have a line from the hydrant so there's a lot of things that are going on simultaneously during a fire incident which makes makes one of the things i've always heard about winter weather in valmeyer to make sense in that i've heard the fire department ask neighbors to clear their fire hydrants because if you're working on minutes you certainly don't have time to dig out a fire hydrant so that is one of the things that we have to struggle with during the winter as i tell people my hydrant to shovel to if you have a fire at your house it's your hydrant that may or may not be shoveled you should work it out between you your neighbors and all the rest it's the neighborhood fire hydrant and would you rather have us spending time putting your fire out or trying to st find the hydrant and then shovel it out eating up precious time so like i said in the few minutes ago we have to get the if we bring our hose line into the house we have three minutes of water if we don't have that feeder line we call it from the hydrant within that three minutes you're in trouble we're in trouble or if you're not in trouble of her right that the homeowner whoever is having that fire is in trouble yes and is the question i have who gets sent where pre determined yes so we have the town is broken up into just different districts we start with the closest trucks are sent for us to and the order that the trucks ascent establishes what duties they do with the incident so the st truck establishes the attack line going into the fire the nd do engine then supply does the water supply the ladder truck has its duties the rescue company which is dual purpose so the they run the we call it a rescue they run the ambulance so when they're not assigned a fire calls they doing a m s calls but when they have a fire call they are firefighters so they they carry their gear on the ambulance they carry air packs and everything so they go right to work on a fire one of my impressions is and i'm not sure what this impression is based on that is that one of the evolutions of the fire department know put quotes around fire is that you're doing more and more medical responses is that a correct impression we do a fair amount of over fifty percent of our  don't dictate you know people's health or how often they go to the doctors or what medical conditions so we're kind of we don't have any control over the types of calls we receive or how often we receive them but they has been a slight up tick in medical calls but nothing drastic it's it's fairly flat but it's over fifty percent and one of the questions we had and the question  behind my question was that i said at the opening i didn't want people to take the fire department for granted simply because it's always there but we also don't want people to think that well gee there's not very many fires  there is there are these folks sitting around waiting for a call that rarely comes i mean there's you guys do you folks do a lot yes so we respond to over three thousand calls emergency calls a year and we the days of the what's often seen on t v of the firefighters with the the engines out on the front ramp washing them all day long or in the in the area the station playing cards i can say in thirty three years i've never played a game of cards that we're always busy doing something it's preparing for the call it's training for the call making sure the equipment ready maintaining the stations in training and so we're we're busy so i'd like to change directions for a minute  think back to yesteryear when i was a kid and when i was growing up and i'm sixty five so i'm a bit older than you are everybody wanted to be an f b i agent or a firefighter or an astronaut  you do kids grow up today when they need to be firefighters we have a fear number of kids that stop by the station and they'll come dressed up as firefighters wearing their zero fits  it seems like everybody loves firefighters fire trucks and those types of things so i believe there are a few people that want to grow up and be firefighters i think that it is a calling you have to want to do the job it is not the best paying job in the world it's very satisfying you have to be willing to help people you have to be willing to help that person whether  how big or small the issue is because the one thing after remember is even if that issue is small to me it may be the biggest thing that's facing that person at this time and you have to be that you have to have a heart you have to be able to help the people and do you talk to actually i talk to glenn clancy on occasion that our director of community development about how it seems like there are fewer and fewer younger kids today who want to go into public serv that are are you finding it easy difficult to keep the force completely staffed we are struggling we're bound by civil service  the pool of good candidates is getting used up fairly quickly and where we're finding is that the people that we're getting now do not have the hands of the mechanical aptitude interest that we need they are smart they can use a computer they can do all sorts of things but as i said i don't need the smartest person or the one that can tell me how much force it's telling them step by step how to do it and without much direction with speed that's done safely and so where we're missing that connection they're smart they're very smart but the physical so we are bound by the civil service system which means that they hold an exam every two years whoever takes the exam is how they how the list is a stablished and we have to hire off that list so it's difficult and is it i mean i ask a silly question here so i apologize is it like the t v shows with police there is there a fire academy there people go through yes there is a fire academy so  it's not a silly question no no i think one of the things that needs to change in the profession is it needs to become a profession so right now firefighting is considered an entry level job you need a high school diploma and a driver's licen we do all the training after that and so i think that we need to look at what other parts of the country are doing so they have community colleges and things like that where you actually get a prospective employee that has the training done they've been through a fire academy they have their paramedic skills they've actually have some education and qualifications not just an education high school diploma and a driver's license and something you just years or seven years or however many years and then cycle out to something else and have to be replaced in yesteryear everybody came on did thirty plus years and it was their career yes we've seen and it's with the younger generations and i'm not picking on anyone in particular they like to be in a place three to five years so we're now seeing some of our newer employees looking at other options  when i get on in you get a job as a police officer or a firefighter it was like hitting the lottery it was the dream job is where we want to belmont was where i wanted to be and that's where i've been  new people are some of them a looking oh well i live somewhere else or i want to go to a bigger department so they'll take the civil service exam again and get hired by another department so that's something we are struggling with right now i've had to people that are leaving to go or have left to go to other departments i have one other that is in the works and th one that's most likely going to go to know that something that we've never faced before so that's no when you look at your job and even just listening to you today  actions and inactions you takes seem to have such consequences and we're talking about people's homes people's businesses people's lives does that does the responsibility way  wife can attest that my work goes on well beyond my actual physical hours at the station and it doesn't matter whether it's training firefighters new equipment looking at new equipment  i'm involved in the d p w in the police station building projects reviewing those plans and specs before they go out not just from a fire safety perspective but from a town perspective i'm a member of the town if i can save the town some money that means is money available for something else so i look at those plans to look at the police station plans came up with a bunch of suggestions on that to increase if efficienc in operations and to save the town money over the weekend i got the link to the high school plan so i've been asked to review those plans from again from a both the fire perspective but also from having been  involved in many multiple building projects in town from the town is more of an owners project certainly look in review it's not simply buildings i remember when the fire department weighed in on the community done it's a good it's a long and active railroad right of way that we respond to and so we have to take that into consideration we also reach out to our neighbors that have bypass and find out that they respond to fires along the bike path injuries along the bike path so it's more than just some pavement on the side of the road yes well i want to ask about a role that i see the fire department to end maybe this is true  every community that seems like the fire department has a community mostly community cheerleader role that's not quite the term but what i'm thinking is when the memorial day parade starts the fire trucks lead the way when the charity softball game with the police department we do the charity hockey game with the police department to raise funds for community members who or the specific charities like muscular dystrophy association and things like that  and it's important for the for us as a civic body and a civic leaders to be present and show that we are part of the community we're not just sitting in our fire stations to step away from from your job is there ever a time where you get to go out to dinner and have a beer and a glass of wine and just be david rather than the chief well i understand the question yes i do  the answer to that question roger is actually no really regardless of whether it's in belmont or outside of belmont i'm a firefighter i'm a fire chief when i see something i may not have a legal duty to respond but i have an ethical and a moral duty to respond and help people it's happened when i've been out to dinner there's been medical emergencies it's happened on an airplane you have to it's in our nature we will respond we will do what needs to be done to help other people and we're running a little short of time here but speaking of being part of the community it seems like there are three entities i mean to give you some biases here there's the fire department the police department relationship amongst the apartments in the town of belmont that is not found in many other communities so we do work very very close together and finally you're you're fifty five dollars almost fifty five two weeks i'll be fifty five happy birthday in advance because that point you start now i don't want to start pushing you out the door but at what point do you start thinking about retirement well the joke around the fire station is that the day you start work is the day you pick your retirement date and we used to write it on the bottom of the wooden chairs in the kitchen and i did not do that but we are we know that my retirement is in the future and we are planning to make sure that there are capable people within the department that can fill my role as well as all of the roles that will open up if there is ascension within the ranks so if somebody from within the ranks moves up to my position that will open up spots all the way down the line and we need to make sure that people are ready to do that that's great well thanks for suffering over chief where you at a time we didn't get through about half of the things i went to we need to have you back to talk about fire prevention welcome to come back at any time we only talked about responses today and i would think a huge part of what you do is to teach fire prevention yes we've been speaking with belmont fire chief david for zell and i do appreciate the chief taking time to come over he does have an incredibly busy schedule and i would like to thank you the listeners for tuning in today you've been listening to community conversations you can stream today's podcast online at the belmont media center website belmont media dot org and you can also access community conversations on i tunes by searching for the b m c podcast network network you've been listening to community conversations i'm your host roger colton i will talk to you again