Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory has a number of mutual aid agreements with other fire departments, especially within the county.
Tuesday, the WWFT Board approved for the fire territory to enter into a mutual aid agreement with Columbia Township in Whitley County for Emergency Technical Rescue Services (ETRS).
Fire Chief Joel Shilling told the WWFT Board, “As you all know, we have a TRT, our Technical Rescue Team, that does a lot of technical incidents, such as confined space, structural collapse, rope rescues. That is one of the services that Columbia Township can not provide, and so they have requested us to enter into a mutual aid agreement with them.”
The agreement already went before the Columbia Township Board, which approved it, Shilling said, and so the WWFT Board was requested to approve it as well.
“For the most part, the mutual aid agreement kind of lays out all the terms and what kind of calls we go on, how it works when we get there, the legal basis on how it works, if there’s damaged equipment - how it gets billed to them,” he said.
Board member David Allbritten said, “I read through this, I like it. One, we remain in command and control of our guys when we’re there - I think that’s important. I think they can have scene, but it’s our guys, our souls, our people control our people, so I think that’s a great thing.”
Fire territory attorney Adam Turner said in reviewing the agreement, he went back to the actual Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory agreement between Wayne Township and the city of Warsaw “and it’s explicitly laid out in there that both of those government entities regulate approval of mutual aid agreements - this, in front of you - to this board on behalf of both the township and the city.”
The board approved the agreement 4-0, with member Mike Klondaris absent.
Prior to the mutual aid agreement, Shilling presented a request to purchase 11 computers, along with the necessary accessories, from J&K Communications for $74,429.88.
“The fire department has been trying to get computers in our vehicles to access the MCT (Mobile Computer Terminal) program through dispatch so we have access to real-time data, some GPS services and then this will also just help us with our data collection for our operations to see where we need to tweak things and do some things to make us a little more efficient,” he explained.
Shilling said they chose to go with Panasonic. They met with J&K, who provided the department with a quote for the computers and equipment. It was discovered that Panasonic is a member of Sourcewell, which is a purchasing cooperative the city has used many times.
“So working with J&K to get them a Sourcewell vendor, we were able to do that. It did delay our process a little bit. We had hoped to have this done last year, but we didn’t get it done. All of this was a budgeted expense as well. But then working with J&K and Adam, we feel that this is the best, that there’s a significant savings ... that this is an acceptable procurement method to move ahead with this purchase,” he stated.
Shilling said he worked with the city’s and county’s tech departments on the purchase, as well as Warsaw Police Department Chief Scott Whitaker and his assistant, Angie Howard. He estimated they worked on the purchase for about six months to get it ready to be implemented.
Allbritten asked if there was any subscription or other fees that come with the purchase. Shilling said this purchase was just for the computer and mounting equipment, but there is a fee from Central Square that probably will be brought before the board at their April meeting. The Warsaw Street Department will install the equipment, which Allbritten said would probably a lot of savings to the fire territory.
The purchase was approved by the board.
Monthly Reports
In her monthly Lutheran EMS report, Alicia Mediano, Lutheran EMS director of operations, said they had a total of 458 encounters in January in Wayne Township.
“One of the things that we were looking at is, January was a much slower month for us. We were down about 40 calls. And so one of the things that we looked at when we compare that to January of last year - if you remember the flu season, we got hit very early with the flu, and we did not get that this year. Our entire healthcare system did not see that flu, so that’s really good for us,” she said.
One of the unfortunate things about January 2026, Mediano continued, was that Lutheran EMS lost one of its paramedics to suicide.
“And as a result of that, during January 7 and then the days during his funeral, we had several other entities that came over to help us and cover that,” she said, listing North Webster and Syracuse fire departments from Kosciusko County, Tri-County from Marshall County and TRAA, Northeast Fire and Southwest Fire from Allen County.
“So some of that we know are our numbers are down simply because of that reflection of service. Thankfully - and I just, again, publicly want to express my appreciation to those services who were willing to jump just instantly and come over to help so our staff could be involved in his services, but we also know that will change some of our numbers,” Mediano said.
All the other numbers for January are pretty consistent compared to past figures.
In his monthly fire report for January, Shilling said the WWFT responded to a total of 300 calls, with 84 of those being overlapping incidents, or 28%.
A total of five were fire calls; 17, hazardous situations; 39, non-emergency; 29, public service; three, rescue; and 207 were medical calls. By station, station 17 had 142 runs; station 13 had 128; and station 15, 30 runs.
As for training, the WWFT documented 477.75 hours, Shilling said, covering “mainly, some of that was with our new ladder truck, trying to get that in service.” They also had some EMS and fire training and hosted traffic incident management training at the Zimmer Biomet Center Lake Pavilion.
Firefighters had 27.25 hours of community service in January, most of which was through the fire territory’s Firefighter Of The Day program, as well as moving their book mobile around to the different Warsaw Community Schools schools.
In other business, the board approved:
• The purchase of a 2024 Chevrolet Tahoe for $42,000 (the trade-in value) from the Warsaw Municipal Airport. The vehicle will replace the fire territory assistant chief’s current vehicle and funds for a new staff vehicle was included in the 2026 budget. The airport originally was going to trade the Tahoe in.
• A transfer resolution for $11,250.16 from FSSA grant to miscellaneous revenue - operating and for $1,200 from local training support grant/Indiana Department of Homeland Security to miscellaneous revenue - equipment replacement.
• All 10 travel requests, as requested by Shilling. Total estimated cost for all the requests is $20.
• The monthly reports, including the operating fund and equipment replacement fund for January.
The next WWFT Board meeting is at 4 p.m. April 7, potentially back in the council chambers at Warsaw City Hall.
