Warsaw Fire Receives Fire Prevention Bureau Of The Year Award
Warsaw Fire Receives Fire Prevention Bureau Of The Year Award
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Warsaw Fire Receives Fire Prevention Bureau Of The Year AwardFor the public education, inspections and investigations the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory does, they recently received the Fire Prevention Bureau of the Year Award 2023 from the Fire Inspectors Association of Indiana (FIAI).
Fire Marshal Joe Fretz and firefighter Max Kinsey, who is certified as a public educator, were presented with the award March 8 at the FIAI convention banquet at Vincennes University.
“I think it’s extremely nice. It’s an honor to receive it for our department. It just shows you the hard work that our guys do because a lot of people don’t understand what our guys do here. This is another way to show you that there’s a lot of things that we do in the background that nobody really realizes what we do,” Fretz said Wednesday.
Trent Stamper, from Columbia City Fire Department, nominated WWFT. Stamper used to be an employee of the territory.
“Trent kind of had a little bit of a hand into helping with the fire prevention stuff on Max’s side of things. He went to the schools and everything like Max and a bunch of other guys do, too,” Fretz said. “I think with him seeing the process that we have done here in our department, he’s trying to take that to implement it into Columbia City, too, so it was just a great gesture that he actually nominated us for this.”
As far as public education, Kinsey said WWFT does a lot with the school system.
“We have a kindergarten program where they go from station to station, learning fire safety at the kindergarten level. We have - coming up in the next week and then for quite a while - we’ll do what we call the Learn Not To Burn program and that starts from kindergarten and goes all the way to sixth grade and each grade has a different program that’s age-appropriate for them,” Kinsey said.
The third-graders are taken out to a trailer, the trailer is filled with smoke and the students are taught how to escape from a house fire. For the second part of that, Kinsey said they take the third-graders back into the classroom where they are taught home safety so they won’t have to escape a fire.
Chief’s Assistant Shirley Fetrow does Family Safety Day and the firefighters help her a lot with that event.
Fretz does a lot with fire extinguisher training for businesses and EDITH (Exit Drills In The Home). “Crews will go out and teach the families on how to get out of their house safely,” he said.
Fretz has been doing fire marshal work since 2011.
“On my side of the job, I go out and do inspections of businesses and make sure that they’re safe for families and for residents and for people that want to come live and play here actually and work here,” Fretz said. “So we do those things, and, again, just make sure they’re safe. We do follow-ups on those. I do fire investigations after a fire. We try to figure out what the origin and cause of the fire would be.”
He has an accelerant canine that he can use to help determine the cause and origin of a fire.
For training at local businesses, Fretz said they use the Bullex system. “So the Bullex system is an electronic extinguisher system that we use. So when we go into businesses (for training), we don’t create the smoke and the heat from a fire. It’s a real good hands-on for first-timers that have never used a fire extinguisher and it’s all electronic, so there’s no powder coming out of the extinguisher and things like that. It’s cheaper for the businesses, too, so they don’t have to have their extinguishers recharged at the end of it,” he said.
Asked how many hours per week they put into public education and fire prevention, Fretz said it was nonstop for him, but it was difficult to estimate how much time he puts into all of what he does.
“He’s extremely busy,” Kinsey said.
“Mine depends on the time of year. With the Learn Not to Burn program coming up, we have eight schools and we are in the schools - when we do the Learn Not to Burn from kindergarten to sixth grade - we’re in the schools from 9 in the morning until 3 o’clock. We’re there for the entire day,” Kinsey said.
With the third-grade program, which is 45 minutes per classroom, he said they are there anywhere between 2.5 to 4 hours sometimes, and that doesn’t include the prep work, hauling the trailer in and tearing everything down. The kindergarten program requires a similar amount of time.
“I have several guys with me that help do all that stuff, so they put in the hours, too,” Kinsey said.
Fretz said the Fire Prevention Bureau of the Year Award is for the entire department because “we have so many guys. Even though Max kind of runs the school projects and things, the classes, every guy here went. When he’s needing help, the guys go out and help with those programs, so really all in all, it’s our whole department that takes part in this.”
Kinsey agreed, using the Firefighter For A Day program as an example.
“So we go to the schools, have the kids either do an art project or write us an essay, and then the guys pick a winner. And then the guys go pick them up in a fire truck and then they ride with the guys all day long,” he said.
There are two winners - one fifth-grader and one sixth-grader - from each school.
Even the firefighters who aren’t on the public education bureau side of the fire department are still involved in the Firefighter For A Day program. They may pick the kids up, vote on the winning students or help in another way.
