Fire District develops five-year plan
According to Chief Ben Mickuleit, the Fire Board decided to be pro-active by getting ahead of potential growth on Pine Island with a five-year plan for the district. Areas affected by this plan include rebuilding Station 2 in St. James City, having Advanced Life Support on each of the trucks, additional staffing and replacing aged equipment.
“Our biggest goal is to provide better service for the community,” said Mickuleit. “Our stations throughout the district are perfectly placed to provide the best response times to the community.”
Part of this service, he said, is taking the trucks from Basic Life Support to ALS, in order to render aid faster and more efficiently. Currently, if there is a serious medical call in Bokeelia, the closest ambulance is coming from Station 1, at The Center, providing it’s not already out on another call. During season, when the district gets multiple calls, often the unit has to come all the way from Burnt Store or even Cape Coral.
“If we have a worst case scenario medical event like a cardiac arrest around Barancas, that’s a 30-minute response time for Advanced Life Support to get there,” said Mickuleit. “We want to have Advanced Life Support equipment in the field like the cardiac monitor, then whatever we find, we can relate to the ambulance so they can make a sound decision on whether to fly them out or do ground transport.”
Implementing this plan will mean staffing and equipping a truck every two years, beginning with Station 3, since that is the farthest location in the district, followed by Station 4, Station 1 and then Station 2. Currently Advanced Life Support is only at Station 2, provided by Lee County, which means the medic on duty can be pulled off island during an emergency. Waiting for an ambulance during season traffic is not optimal, making on-island Advanced Life Support a matter of life and death. This part of the plan, Mickuleit said, may take as long as 10 years taking training and credentialing into consideration.
Rebuilding Station 2 is of major importance since it was built somewhere between the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The commissioners are hoping to replace the aged building sometime in the next five years.
“The service won’t change, but the accommodation for the crew inside, as well as the reliability, will,” said Mickuleit. “Eventually we’re going to be forced to do something with the station. If we have a bad storm or a hurricane come through and damage the station, then we will have to do something with it.”
In the next five to six years, Mickuleit said they are looking at additional staffing with the hopes of adding three more firefighters every three or four years. With the volume of calls having increased 4.6 percent in 2020, Mickuleit said they anticipate a further increase this year as there has already been an escalation compared to this time last year. Equipment replacement in the next five years is also vital.
“We still have two trucks over 20 years old,” said Mickuleit, “and some of the equipment we are required to replace as it has a shelf life, such as a bunker kit and active shooter kit.”
A bunker kit includes helmet, hood, mask, coat, trousers and boots, and has to be replaced every 10 years. An active shooter kit includes a vest, metal plates, and helmet and has to be on each truck.
“You have to be prepared,” said Mickuleit. “You never know when something tragic is going to happen. We have a vision we want to accomplish, and we’re all on the same page with where we want to be.”