Minutes of Emergency Services Committee Visit to Chain of Lakes Fire Department
July 8, 2017
The following Emergency Services Committee for Watab Township met at the Town Hall on Saturday, July 8, 2017 at noon to travel to the Chain of Lakes Fire Department: Todd Waytashek, Craig Gondeck, John Olson, Ed Kacures, Maureen Graber, and Pat Spence. They met Dan Holthaus, Chairman of the Fire Department and Fire Board at 1:00 p.m. at the Chain of Lakes Fire Department on the east side of Richmond. Dan was the driving force in getting the department established. He is a retired mechanic, and displayed a great deal of knowledge on the equipment and was responsible for researching, obtaining, and servicing it.
Dan gave a tour of the facility, which was built in 2012 at a cost of $350,000. It has four over-head doors on the front of the building to house the equipment, meeting room, shower, restrooms, exercise room, and two offices. Dan recommended not having back doors to prevent heat loss and to keep the building cleaner.
Their current Fire & Rescue truck cost $32,000; it replaced the first one which was donated by Gold Cross. The second Fire & Rescue truck came from New York at a cost of $65,000. They had their tanker truck built in Litchfield; cost was $55,000. Gold Cross also donated an ambulance. Dan recommended taking the fire truck to every call, even the medical calls, because granting agencies use the number of fires over a three-year period to determine your grant amount. Dan said that the DNR has given them a lot of equipment. The brush rig held a water tank and a stretcher mount. They have a flare bottom boat for lake & swamp rescues. The hose drying rack was built by Dan and his son.
They have two wells, side by side; one is for the front operation and one for the trucks. The pumper truck will fill in seven minutes; the well pumps 600 gallons per minute. Dan recommended contact with Sgt. Dickhaus, Stearns County Deputy, for information on radios. Every fire fighter has a key to the building, plus there is a keyless entry code. They use their cell phones to know the location of every fire fighter responding to a fire and use pagers to be dispatched.
The fire department has had a $100,000 budget for three years; Dan said they spend $75,000 to $80,000 and bank the difference for their equipment fund. They are part of Stearns County Mutual Aid.
In recruiting fire fighters, they do not ask a person’s age, allow those who can respond within ten minutes from home or work, and have several women on the team. Currently, they have twenty-three fire fighters. To begin with, the fire chief took the position for two years; he was a fire fighter who moved from Watkins. The fire fighters are dispatched from Stearns County Sheriff’s Department.
The department is comprised of parts of five townships: 1/3 of Wakefield, 85% of Munson, and a couple sections each of the other three townships. Their billing is based on usage with about 100 calls per year. Medical calls are about ninety percent of the total calls.
Dan also provided the operating budget for 2011 through 2017. If Watab went with the same type of building, Dan suggested using the same architect: Lon Negen, from the Richmond area.
It was a very useful meeting, and Maureen took photos of the building and equipment, which will be shared at the next committee meeting.
Respectfully submitted by Pat Spence