PINE BLUFF FIRE CHIEF DECLARES: THINK BIG

By Ray King/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

When Don Horton became chief of the Pine Bluff Fire Department, he brought with him a number of ideas and plans to improve the department and in a recent interview, said he is working to implement those in the city.

“I want the Pine Bluff Fire Department to be a small fire department that thinks big,” he said “I want an organization that is highly trained, an organization that practices safety every day, and we’re going to work with the limited resources we have to move this organization forward.”

One of the first things the department implemented this year was the creation of the Rapid Intervention Team (RIT), or sending three engines and one ladder truck to the scene of structure fires, instead of two engines and a ladder truck.

The third engine and its crew is there to provide back-up for other firefighters battling the blaze, and if not needed, are released by the senior officer on duty at the scene.

“It wasn’t very long after we went to RIT that we had a structure fire at an apartment building on Poplar Street,” Capt. Scott Moore said about the new approach. “We had the RIT team in front and we decided to move them to the back when a crew went up the stairs and fell through the floor.

“Firefighter down came through on the radio and that RIT crew was right there immediately and ready and they went in with a line and effected the rescue,” Moore said. “Fortunately there was no one hurt but if the RIT team had not been there, we would have had to pull firefighters from other jobs and that would have taken time.”

Another change the department has implemented is in the way new firefighters are trained.

“In the past, we would hire firefighters right off the street and put them on a truck,” Horton said. “You can’t do that so what I said was we were going to train them before they set foot on a truck because it was going to cost us a lot more money if they got hurt and hadn’t had the training.”

What that means was all new firefighters were sent to the Arkansas Fire Training Academy at East Camden before being assigned to emergency duty.

In addition, every member of the department is required to complete a minimum of 24 hours of in-service training annually, certified by the fire academy.

“That can be a challenge at times when it comes to scheduling and that’s where having in-house instructors like we do becomes valuable because we can do the training, certified training, without taking time away from work and without having to pay overtime,” Lt. Shauwn Howell, the department’s public information officer said.

“As things change, new tools and equipment are purchased, new trucks are purchased, we can do in-house training that is certified through the fire academy and that type of training is priceless to the community,” Howell said.

Changing communications methods, including the use of plain language instead of codes in radio transmissions is new for the department, Howell said, as well as cross training with other agencies.

“”We have to deal with MECA (Metropolitan Emergency Communications Association), the police department, sheriff’s departments and that calls for cross training because we do have incidents where all of us are on a scene and we have to operate cooperatively,” he said.

As proud as he is of the strides the department has made in emergency response procedures, Horton is equally proud of community programs that have been instituted in the past six months.

“We’ve instituted free blood pressure checks at all our stations because we know that 60 percent of our calls are medical calls so we’re looking at things to reduce that number,” Horton said.

“We’re doing home security surveys,” he said. “Not just putting up smoke detectors but inspecting homes for fire hazards free of charge. This time next year we’re going to have our first fire explorer post through the Boy Scouts and for the first time in the history of this city, we’ve partnered with the Pine Bluff schools and we’re going to be in every 5th grade classroom teaching fire prevention education.”