Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 10
longer located in the optimal locations and as you look through the service part of this report, you are going
to see which stations are still in ideal locations and probably need to renovated and there’s some stations
that it might make sense just to rebuild in a different location. So that’s part of this planning process, is to
have those discussions now and see how it fits into your overall capital plan and to make decisions that will
get you to where you need to be when it is time to be there.
So with a that in mind, as you are looking at these stations and talking about renovations and relocations,
some of the things that you really just want to think about building into stations now that may not have been
done back when some of the stations were built are things like drive through bays. You want the ability for
the firefighters to drive in forward and to leave forward. A lot of our accidents happen when you are
backing up so right now you have drive through bays in some of the stations, the problem is you have so
many apparatus, they can’t drive through because there’s things in the way. So even though you have
drive through bays, you are not getting the benefits of it and you are still requiring people to back up.
Backing up is dangerous, accidents happen, people get hurt, and if we can avoid backing up a large fire
apparatus, it is always a better idea to do that.
Another issue is cancer in the fire service. Your turnout gear goes into fires with firefighters, they are
washing it, they are making every effort they can but at the end of the day there is still going to be a
process of off gassing following a fire where the gas is coming off of the turnout gear and now the firefighter
is in that fire station or exposed to that off gas that happened in a fire long after the fire is over. So modern
practices are to create well ventilated, separate rooms where turn out gear is stored so that as that process
happens, those contaminants are removed and the firefighters aren’t there breathing it again. So these are
all things that you would want to consider as you are making renovations and rebuilding fire stations in the
future. All of that helps for the safety of your firefighters.
So just to kind of summarize the process we went through, we had 22 virtual and in-person interviews,
meetings and facility tours as part of this process. We tried not to do this in a vacuum, the pandemic
certainly gave us some challenges but we wanted to talk to anybody that would talk to us. We wanted to
hear what was going on and see how your system was working. Knowing that we couldn’t meet with
everybody in person or virtually, we also did a 20 question on-line survey of the Nashua firefighter’s
numbers in the community of the fire service. And the reason for that was we wanted to give them an
opportunity to have an anonymous chance to give their input, their thoughts and to give their ratings. So |
will tell you, we had some pretty good responses out of that 20 question on-line service for the fire
department. 94 members of the department did complete the survey which is about 54% of your members.
So it is considered representative of the majority of the Fire Department.
What those surveys told us was very much the same as what we heard during all of the meetings with the
fire fighters in the stations. First and foremost, your firefighters are proud to be members of Nashua Fire
Rescue. They are proud to be part of this organization, they are proud of the work that they do, they are
proud to serve the City, they are just very proud of the work they do. | think that’s important because there
is a level of pride that comes with that that you can’t create, it just happens from within and that is a tribute
to you for the resources that the Chiefs and the Aldermen have provided as far as training and equipment
and their ability to do their job well. And they are proud of that, so kudos to all of you for being part of that
process.
Beyond that, they all felt that the people that make up the Department are by far the Department’s biggest
strength. They talked about the number of people, the manpower, the aggressive firefighting, again they
are proud of the service they provide, they are proud of the level of training they have. They do a good job
and they are proud of it. So | think it’s important to recognize that. Because as we go through this process
there’s always room for improvement, but you have a lot of good things going and a lot of good people
doing that work and it is really important to give credit where credit is due. And that’s absolutely where they
good deeds are happening.
