Finance Committee - 11/18/2020 Page 9
Mayor Donchess
Anybody else have questions or comments? Yes, Alderwoman Klee?
Alderman Klee
Thank you. | guess my question would be, you mentioned the 6 to 8 years. Do we track the usage of these or
do we just, you can do a visual and say it’s time. Because | know there probably are some firefighters that go
out more often than others, only because of the shift that they are on or something to that nature. | don’t mean
that one works harder than the other because that’s not the case. But it could even be one engine company.
So is there a way that you track this or is it just you do a visual and say, there’s a little wear and we need to
replace these?
Steve Buxton, Assistant Fire Chief
Steve Buxton, Nashua Fire. That’s a very good question, Alderwoman Klee. So we do have — some
companies are busier than others and some see increased fire activity than others. They wear their protective
clothing pretty much to every incident they go on. So the busier companies do see more wear on their
protective clothing than the slower companies. That being said, you know by luck of the draw, you could hit
multiple fires and wear through your protective clothing faster than somebody else on the Fire Department. We
do do visual inspections on an annual basis. They have a regular schedule where they are supposed to be
laundering and inspecting their PPE of their own will with their company officers. But there’s also an annual
program within the Department where we inspect and as the Deputy Chief, you can see him in the crowd there,
Deputy Kirk, he’s the guy in charge of ordering the protective clothing. So as he is analyzing his list of names
of who is up for replacement in that 6 to 8 year window, he’s also analyzing who potentially might be departing
us in the near future because they reached the end of their tenure so it’s not really worth buying them a new
set of PPE because they are still inside that 10 year window as well as who can probably get a couple extra
years out of their PPE versus who we will have to replace on the early side. So there are multiple factors that
are taken into account when we decide if we are actually purchasing somebody’s PPE.
Alderman Klee
Thank you very much. Mr. Mayor, I’d just like to make one quick comment if that’s OK?
Mayor Donchess
Yeah that’s fine.
Alderman Klee
Thank you. Yesterday’s fire, | had heard there was one firefighter that had been hit by something. | hope he’s
doing well and everybody else stayed safe. | know it was a very large fire yesterday so thank you for all that
you do.
Steve Buxton, Assistant Fire Chief
Thank you for that and he is doing very well at home resting with his family at this point in time and expected to
make a full recovery. Thank you for your thoughts.
Mayor Donchess
Anyone else with questions for Mr. Buxton? Madam Clerk, would please call the roll?
