Archive for March 15th, 2016

Aurora Fire Department updates

Mar 15

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Aurora aldermen voted to appoint Battalion Chief John Gilbert as deputy fire chief and Captain Javan Cross as fire marshal.

Gilbert is replacing Deputy Chief Tom Griener, who retired along with Fire Chief John Lehman earlier this year. Lehman was replaced by Gary Krienitz, who was Aurora’s fire marshal.

Cross is a 1991 graduate of East Aurora High School, and has served in the Aurora Fire Department for 18 years. Beginning as a firefighter and paramedic in 1997, Cross also became a fire investigator in 2004. He served in those dual roles until 2009, when he was promoted to lieutenant. Five years later, in 2014, he was promoted to captain.

Gilbert has been with the Aurora Fire Department for 27 years, beginning as a firefighter and paramedic in 1989. In 2003, he was promoted to lieutenant, and in 2010 he was promoted to captain. In 2014, Gilbert became battalion chief.

thanks Dan

Tags: Aurora FD Battalion Chief John Gilbert, Aurora FD Captain Javan Cross, Aurora FD Deputy Chief John Gilbert, Aurora FD Fire Marshall Javan Cross, Aurora Fire Department, Aurora Fire Department promotions, Deputy Chief Tom Griener, Fire Chief Gary Krienitz

Chicago firefighter and author … Matthew Drew

Mar 15

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Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

Matthew Drew goes to work in a building in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. It is a firehouse and Drew is a firefighter, one of 4,800-some other dedicated people in Chicago who share this precarious profession.

“I love my job,” he says. “There is no job on Earth any better.”

He lives across the city, in the Beverly neighborhood on the South Side with his wife and three young children and he likes to play softball and other sports. He also likes to write.

He’s been a firefighter since 2002. He’s earned a master’s degree in writing from DePaul University and has taught English composition at local high schools and colleges. He has taught firefighting tactics at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has served on the Chicago Fire Department Hazardous Incident Team.

He joined the ranks of published authors in 2013 with his first book, researched and written he says “over five years, whenever I could find the time.” It is the fine and detailed, stirring and deeply researched “Shadows of Chicago: The True Story of Three Men and the Crimes That Shocked America.”

The book began as a story of Chicago Fire Marshal James “Big Jim” Horan, an important and courageous Chicago figure whose life and times have never been given their deserved due. “I was fascinated by him,” says Drew. “Just couldn’t get enough of him and his story.”

Drew researched and he wrote and he still fought fires. In February 2010 he was fighting a fire at 46th Street and Ellis Avenue. He was breaking through a wooden wall with an ax when that ax hit concrete and he felt a sharp pain in his back. Initially he had no idea what damage there was but he soon learned that it was very bad. He had shattered a disk and severed his spinal cord. He was paralyzed from the waist down. The outlook was bleak: “You’ll never walk again,” doctors said.

But he did, through a slow but steady recovery and now says, “I am virtually as good as new.”

On top of this physical trouble, a flood in his home wiped out all of his research materials and soured him on the book. Eventually he came back to it, reconstructing his research and deciding to expand the story to also include two other main characters.

So, in addition to Horan, we get to know his childhood friends Charles Comiskey, the baseball player/manager who founded the White Sox and helped start the American League, and Fred Busse, eventually the corrupt mayor of Chicago and a man of sordid tastes and wicked friends.

All three men come to tragic ends and their roads there are filled with many facets of Chicago’s lively history, from the nasty/sexy denizens of the Levee district and the craziness of its First Ward Ball, the Black Sox scandal and a variety of nefarious characters, including politicians and a fellow named Al Capone.

The book’s opening grabs the reader, starting when the three main characters are kids, fresh from playing sandlot baseball on a bumpy field Oct. 8, 1871. It was later on that day, the kids in bed, when shortly after 9 p.m. “a fire broke out in the O’Leary barn. … Minutes after, they woke to the sounds of screaming men, women, and children. To their horror, they discovered their neighbors wearing torn, filthy pajamas, their bodies covered in soot, quickly moving from the fire burning behind them … now engulfed by a red-orange fire spiraling a hundred feet into the sky. The clear, star-filled night was draped by a dense-black smoke cloud speckled with glowing embers. The fire below reflected off the dark smoke cloud, making the scene even more astonishing to their young eyes. They must have felt terrified as they stared at the terrible beauty of the rising inferno.”

“One thing that is gratifying is how many firefighters have bought my book and told me they liked it,” Drew says. “While I was writing, I mostly kept it a secret except from a few people.”

For all his academic credentials, Drew writes in clear and unadorned prose. He is a storyteller, not a philosopher or theorist. And he remains hooked on history, prowling libraries and independent bookstores. Few are surprised about his second career, by his diligence.

Drew intends to keep writing, focusing on fires and the men and women who fight them, here and elsewhere. He has been donating a portion of his first book’s proceeds to the fire department’s fund for widows and orphans.

Tags: Chicago Firefighter is an author, Matthew Drew, Shadows of Chicago: The True Story of Three Men and the Crimes That Shocked America

Maywood orders new engine

Mar 15

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News, New Apparatus Order | 4 Comments

This from Tony Carlini:

Maywood Engine 507; Spartan Metrostar, Marion Body Works body, Hale 1,500-gpm pump, and 500-gallon tank. Delivery is expected late August 2016

New engine design for Maywood.

Tags: Marion Body Works, Marion Fire and Rescue Apparatus, Maywood Fire Department, Maywood orders new fire engine, mechanical drawing of new fire engine, Tony Carlini

Newport Township FPD seeks tax increase

Mar 15

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | 2 Comments

Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

The Newport Township Fire Protection District is again seeking a tax increase to upgrade equipment.

A referendum on the March 15 ballot will ask for .132 cents for every $100 of a home’s assessed market value — the same proposal that was defeated last year when it got only 44 percent of the vote. If the referendum passes, a person with a home valued at $100,000 would pay $43.75 per year to the district, Newport Fire Chief Mark Kirchhoffer said.

The chief said taxes have not been raised for the fire district in 23 years and the money is needed to replace equipment. He said home values in the township have dropped from $268,807,724 in 2009 to $188,752,091 in 2015, which means less revenue generated through taxes. That loss of about $80 million in taxable value has left the Newport Fire District with about $1.25 million in tax revenue and a $1.9 million budget.

“Our tax rate would be fine if we had something to tax,” Kirchhoffer said. “People just don’t want taxes to go up. I get that. But I live here and I want an ambulance to come to my door if I need it. You can’t do it much cheaper than we’re doing it, and people want and deserve fire protection. … We’re trying to be frugal, good business people.”

If the referendum is approved, the new money would be used to replace equipment. The National Fire Protection Association Standard calls for replacing equipment after 25 years. The fire district has engines purchased in 1989, 1995 and 2000. It also has a tanker purchased in 2000. New gear is needed for all the firefighters, and the district wants to replace two aging heart monitors and one ambulance.

The fire district consists of 38 people to cover 2,300 structures over 33 square miles in portions of Beach Park, Old Mill Creek, Wadsworth and unincorporated Lake County.

The land is about 40 percent residential, 35 percent farmland and 25 percent is owned by the Forest Preserve. A small percentage is also commercial or industrial. Ninety-five percent of the coverage area has no public water infrastructure. Because of the lack of county infrastructure, Kirchhoffer said the fire district has different needs than other departments.

“People don’t realize we have to have more tankers than other departments because there are no water mains,” Kirchhoffer said.

He said the fire district is also responsible for responding to crashes on Interstate 94, and the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority does not reimburse for the responses.

The fire district does take in revenue from ambulance fees, but changes in health care laws and coverage have reduced insurance reimbursements, while the fire district provides the same level of service.