Thread by @shayshinecastle

Next: An update from the Fire Department on how their master plan implementation is going.

documents.bouldercolorado.gov/WebLink/DocVie…

A couple of big things in this last master plan update was the Fire Dept taking over more emergency response services, referred to as Advanced Life Support.

This started WAY back in 2018. Boulder contracts with AMR to provide ambulance/emergency response services, but Boulder Fire goes with them. In fact, most of the calls the fire dept handles are emergency response.

But fire personnel didn't have tools and training to do all the things they needed, like giving drugs or using cardiac machines.

City response times are faster than AMR response times, and in cardiac events, that means more lives saved.

Also there's the issue that the city was subsidizing the salaries of EMTs because a multi-million dollar corporation refused to pay them a living wage. dailycamera.com/2018/08/28/wit…

It cost the city a bit to bring all this stuff in-house, but it is supposed to decrease response times and save lives, so a previous council supported it.

Currently 7 paramedics on the job, Fire Chief Mike Calderazzo says; 3 others in school now.

That reduction in response time ("as close to 6 min as we can," Calderazzo says) should begin next year once those other staff have finished paramedic school.

It's not just emergency response times that the Fire Dept is trying improve.

There has been a "concerted effort of all regional chiefs to improve the ability to respond quickly to fire starts," Calderazzo says.

That happened post-Marshall Fire, when folks realized just how much danger we are all in. boulderbeat.news/2022/04/30/win…

"We no longer consider (urban-wildland) interface to be a small part of the city," Calderazzo says. Dept stepping up its assessments of homes to determine their fire risk.

"We're working through those and trying to get those done as quickly as possible," Calderazzo says.

Calderazzo: We're also trying to reduce 911 call volume by filtering out non-emergency calls. We're looking into a program that will put some calls to a nurse to connect them with "clinical resources."

The city also working on alternative response models for the police, but police and fire/EMS often overlap (for things like mental health crises), so hopefully that will help as well.

Also lots of investment into wildfire response, the Chief says, though he doesn't go into detail.

And working a lot to provide mental health support to firefighters. Suicide is a leading cause of death among firefighters — higher than line-of-duty or job-related deaths.
blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-…

Something else the fire dept is working on, which I wrote about a few years ago: Increasing the number of female firefighters. The pool is "just not there," Caldnerazzo says, but we've got a task force on it.

boulderbeat.news/2020/01/05/bou…

Speer: I really appreciate this focus on wellness, "especially with the stressors that you all are involved in."

Wallach uses the phrase "offending vegetation," which just conjures the best mental images of rowdy and uncouth plants.

Here's what he actually said: Can we use ARPA $$ to subsidize homeowners who need to take out "offending vegetation" (plants that present a wildfire risk)

Prob not ARPA $$, since it has to be COVID-related, but Chief Calderazzo says the dept is looking at ways to increase community awareness and resilience.

You can request an assessment for your home (or do a curbside one yourself, tho for the life of me I couldn't figure it out) bouldercolorado.gov/services/wildf…

Which seems like a good place to end this thread.

@threadreaderapp please unroll. Thanks!