The Bloomington Fire Department has new leadership with Cory Matheny taking over from retiring Fire Chief Eric West. Matheny said West was a mentor, who left the department in excellent shape.
“He was someone that led by example," said Matheny, who took over last week. "He wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He would be out there helping you on your daily checks when needed, doing stuff on the floor. It was never, ‘I’m the boss. Do this.’ It was, ‘This is how we're going to get through something together.’ That's really always resonated with me as something that I want to be.”
Recruitment
Efforts to make it easier to become a Bloomington firefighter are bearing fruit, said Matheny. The latest push to fill vacancies lifted the pre-requisite that new staff must be paramedics before they can be hired.
"I'm happy to say we have over 100 people who have applied to become Bloomington firefighters, and we are only two weeks into this recruitment period," said Matheny.
The recruitment drive runs through the end of the year. The department is short by 14 people, though six of those are intended for a new ambulance approved in the budget several years ago.
“We've not been able to get the personnel to fully staff it. And we did not want to staff it with overtime," said Matheny. "The crews are already running a lot of calls and working overtime at it is so that if we put a new, unnecessary burden on them it leads to fatigue and burnout and then a vicious cycle of losing people because we're working them too hard.”
The shortage still amounts to about a half a shift of firefighters, noted Matheny, forcing the department to ask for volunteers to take overtime shifts and about twice a week to impose compulsory overtime on someone.
“The overtime is frequent enough that they can kind of choose what they want to work on a certain day and then, all of a sudden, they're at the top of the list. They might get forced. And it's hurtful to them. It impacts their family and plans that they had for the day and it's not a good position to be in as an employer but we also have a duty,” said Matheny.
He said the department spends about $2 million a year on overtime in a budget of $25 million, adding recruitment means more than easing entry requirements.
“Our goal is to get out in front of some of the different civic organizations, different churches, community centers, and go out and actively recruit and tell our story and why it's important that they come work for us," said Matheny.
Filling the holes in staffing will reduce the burden on firefighters and save taxpayer money, he said, noting the shortage of firefighters is a nationwide problem at all levels of fire service organizations.
Technology
One of the challenges of the fir chief's is to make sure the department stays up to date or even leads other departments in adopting new technology.
The BFD started a drone program about a year ago, and Matheny said it has helped determine the best way to fight big structure fires, using thermal imaging of hot spots from above. Drone pilots also have flown the crafts into truck trailers that potentially had leaking hazardous materials to look for those issues.
Matheny said that tech is still developing.
"I think we will see a lot of expansion of drone technology and probably some other unmanned resources," said Matheny.
The fire department also is starting to use new lighter air packs with masks that can be upgraded.
"They have the ability to build on stuff on the masks in the future, maybe with thermal imaging built right into that mask," said Matheny.
