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Posts Tagged North Chicago Fire Department

North Chicago Fire Department news

Sep 18

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Excerpts from theyoujournal.com:

North Chicago Fire Department personnel delivered donations including care packages for young patients and their families to the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

A fundraiser for the patient gifts was organized after a member of the fire department experienced, firsthand, how the services provided by the hospital staff changed the lives of so many children.

“I am amazed by the Lurie Children’s Hospital staff, their knowledge, professionalism and moreover how they work each and every day bearing witness to these critically ill children,” said North Chicago Fire Department Lieutenant Kim Schaefer.

North Chicago Fire Chief Dell Urban was more than pleased with the generosity her staff displayed.

thanks Dan

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North Chicago Fire Department news

May 24

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

In an emotional ceremony Monday in North Chicago, Flight for Life officials credited the North Chicago Fire Department with the organization’s most dramatic rescue effort in 2015, honoring local first-responders police officers and firefighters for saving the life of a Chicago woman last autumn.

The 22nd annual Scene Call of the Year Award for 2015 was presented to the firefighting paramedic team of Cmdr. Joshua Rickabaugh, Cmdr. Joshua Monroe and firefighters Danny Roark, Joseph Hernandez and Joseph Schimanski.

Nicole Wood of Chicago, was a passenger in a BMW SUV that crashed into a gravel truck on Route 41 south of Route 137 on Sept. 21. The SUV’s driver was not seriously hurt, but Wood was trapped in the twisted metal of the wreckage, crushed beneath the truck.

Rescue personnel said they went through virtually every extrication tool in their trucks in an effort to free the critically injured, unconscious woman. Route 41 was blocked off to create a landing zone for the helicopter.

“We knew (the victim) had multi-system trauma, and it was important to get her out quickly,” Rickabaugh said, but he added that “with the complexities of the extrication, it took us one hour and 20 minutes,” with the norm being 20 to 40 minutes.

North Chicago officials stressed the mutual aid and invaluable assistance to the call by personnel from Naval Station Great Lakes, Knollwood, Libertyville, the North Chicago Police Department, North Chicago Police dispatch, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, and Flight For Life.

North Chicago Fire Chief Dell Urban said after the ceremony that “this was the call of a lifetime, an extraordinary accident. Several chiefs on location said they’d never seen anything like this, in terms of the lengthy extrication.”

Of some 1,000 calls a year that Flight for Life responds to, only a handful are considered by a panel of judges, based on guidelines for using air medical transport. The submissions were examined for scene safety, triage decisions, critical thinking, complex planning and accident scene management, integration of the helicopter into the call, and use of skills that went beyond the call of duty to treat the patient.

thanks Dan

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North Chicago Fire Chief Dell Urban

Apr 8

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

Twenty-five years ago, Firefighter Dell Urban’s greatest challenge in sharing the all-male quarters at the North Chicago Fire Department was simply getting enough sleep.

Urban, then a 22-year-old rookie, [said] the men’s snoring … drove her onto a couch in the station kitchen.

Fast forward to June 2012, when the North Chicago City Council appointed Urban to lead the department, making her the first female municipal fire chief in Lake County, and the fourth in Illinois.

Urban, 46, is one of two female fire chiefs in Illinois. The other, Tracy Kenny in Broadview, was appointed Monday night.

A year after graduating from Warren Township High School in 1987, Urban said she lacked direction until her brother, Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy Lonnie Urban, urged her to volunteer at the Newport Fire Protection District.

At Newport, she said, “They gave you a pair of boots and a coat and said ‘Here’s your gear. Welcome aboard. Now go fight a fire.’ “Since I went on my very first call as a volunteer, I thought ‘This is phenomenal.’ I (then) began my paramedic training, and I don’t think I’ve ever looked back.”

She was hired at North Chicago in November 1991.

“I was just thrilled I got on at North Chicago,” she said. “The majority of the guys were super. We had no issues.”

As chief, she oversees a department of 34 full-time personnel and one paid-on-call firefighter/paramedic. With an annual budget of $3 million, Urban takes pride showing off the department’s $775,000 ladder truck, $400,000 pumper and three ambulances, which run about $160,000 apiece.

She’s equally proud of upgrades at the main station by firefighters who installed cabinets in the spacious kitchen, chest-high partitions in the sleeping quarters and display cabinets in the station entranceway.

“Although it’s hard work and different work, I think I’m better suited now in this position to do administrative work and get the guys the tools, equipment and training they need to do the job,” she said.

Retired North Chicago fire Cmdr. Doug Henderson, whose son, Brian is a fourth-generation firefighter working for North Chicago, said that Urban “was aggressive and did her job. Even if she was tired, she went all the way till the job was done. Nobody can take anything away from her as far as her firefighting ability or being a paramedic.”

“At the end of the day, I still feel like I’m one of the guys,” Urban said. “I grew up with half of them. I’m taking care of them, and they take care of me, too.”

thanks Dan

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Firefighting family works along the North Shore

Jan 23

Posted by Admin in Fire Service News | Comments off

Excerpts from the DailyNorthShore.com:

When Jerry Kluchka was honored during a Lake Bluff Village Board of Trustees meeting on Dec. 14 for 30 years of service to the Lake Bluff Fire Department, his three firefighter sons were there to share the honor with him.

Tim Kluchka, 30, is a member of the North Chicago Fire Department; Matt Kluchka, 25, works for the Lake Forest Fire Department; and Russell Kluchka, 23, fights fires in Highwood.

Lake Bluff’s department consists entirely of volunteers, and all four Kluchkas serve in their hometown. They said when a call goes out to multiple towns, they head to the blaze but not always from the same place.

“It’s definitely interesting,” Russell Kluchka said. “One time there was a fire in Lake Forest, I got there from Highwood and we all saw each other. People give us a hard time. They say ‘it’s you again.”

Jerry Kluchka, who has lived in Lake Bluff since elementary school, joined the department just before Tim was born.

“I had friends whose fathers were firemen,” Kluchka said. “We got to go inside the fire station when I was a little guy. In Lake Bluff they blew the siren to call the volunteers. We lived nearby and ran down to the station to see the fire trucks leave.”

Using his mechanical skills, Jerry started volunteering. He said he worked on the equipment and it was not long before he was a firefighter. As his family started to grow, the next generation of Kluchka men hung around the firehouse like their father did as a youth.

All four are paramedics. Tim, Matt and Russell said they all took EMT courses while in high school and were volunteering in their teens.

“There were times I ditched school to go on an ambulance call,” Tim Kluchka said. “I’d come in for the last periods (of the day) and got some looks.”

“My wife got some calls about that,” Jerry Kluchka added.

Though the younger generation of Kluchkas are full-time firemen, Jerry Kluchka is a volunteer.

thanks Dan

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MVA in North Chicago with extrication, 9/21/15

Sep 22

Posted by Admin in Motor vehicle accident, MVA, Rescue scene photos | 5 Comments

Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

Firefighters needed more than an hour Monday afternoon to remove an injured woman from her SUV after a crash with a dump truck on northbound Route 41, south of 137 in North Chicago just before 1 p.m.

The woman was then airlifted by  Flight for Life.

“It was an extremely difficult extrication,” said Cmdr. Joshua Rickabaugh of the North Chicago Fire Department. “The way that the victim was pinned inside the car, it was difficult to remove the car around her.”

Libertyville, Knollwood, and Great Lakes fire departments assisted at the scene.

helicopter at scene of horrific crash

Tim Olk photo

firefighters work to free a driver after a crash

Tim Olk photo

EMS personnel at crash site

Tim Olk photo

medevac leaving crash site with patient

Tim Olk photo

car after being cut apart by firefighters

Tim Olk photo

firefighters work to free a driver after a crash

Tim Olk photo

firefighters work to free a driver after a crash

Tim Olk photo

firefighters work to free a driver after a crash

Tim Olk photo

firefighters work to free a driver after a crash

Tim Olk photo

firefighters work to free a driver after a crash

Tim Olk photo

firefighters work to free a driver after a crash

Tim Olk photo

More photos at firescenes.net

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Funeral for Retired North Chicago FF Roger M Belski

Jun 10

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | 2 Comments

This from Tim Olk:

Funeral For Retired North Chicago FF Roger M Belski

bugler playing taps

Tim Olk photo

widow of Firefighter receives flag

Tim Olk photo

fire department funeral

Tim Olk photo

fire department funeral

Tim Olk photo

fire department funeral

Tim Olk photo

fire department funeral

Tim Olk photo

fire department funeral

Tim Olk photo

fire department funeral

Tim Olk photo

fire department funeral

Tim Olk photo

fire department funeral

Tim Olk photo

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Area ambulances from AEV

Jan 21

Posted by Admin in Ambulance photos | 10 Comments

This from Josh Boyajian:

From the Alexis website –

New Ambos

  • North Chicago FD
  • McHenry Fire Dist
  • Long Grove FD
  • Elk Grove Township FD
  • Beech Park FD
  • Zion FD
  • Bloomingdale FD

 

AEV ambulance Type I

Bloomingdale Fire District ambulance. Alexis photo

AEV ambulance Type I

Zion FD ambulance. Alexis photo

AEV ambulance Type I

North Chicago FD ambulance. Alexis photo

AEV ambulance Type I

McHenry Township FPD ambulance. Alexis photo

AEV ambulance Type I

Long Grove FPD ambulance. Alexis photo

AEV ambulance Type I

Elk Grove Township FD ambulance. Alexis photo

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North Chicago receives federal grant

Jul 30

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

From the Lake County News-Sun:

The oxygen tanks firefighters use to enter burning buildings or when smoke conditions outside are dangerous are essential — and North Chicago’s Fire Department is celebrating because it can finally replace its old ones.

“Our old equipment was from 2002 and it was so obsolete that we couldn’t repair it. They no longer made the parts for it,” Fire Chief Dell Urban said.

This week the department announced it had obtained 30 new self-contained breathing apparatuses, a significant upgrade over the old equipment, with the help of a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant. They also got a new Cascade system, which refills the bottles.

“The new ones have built in safety provisions and they increase our air from 30 minutes to 45 minutes so we have more time for search and recovery,” Urban said.

They will also have emergency oxygen bottles for when a firefighter gets trapped inside a structure that gives rescuers 60 minutes of air time.

The equipment cost $195,000. The federal share is 90 percent or $175,500, while the city has to cover 10 percent of the cost or $19,500. The North Chicago City Council approved its share last week.

The grant money came from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program, administered by FEMA in cooperation with the department’s United States Fire Administration.

Each breathing apparatus bought with the grant money will include a high-pressure, 45-minute air bottle, breathing regulator, frame, harness, full face piece, and a spare bottle. The new equipment is expected to have a 10-year service life.

thanks Dan

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North Chicago Fire Department receives state grant

Mar 8

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

The Lake-County News Sun has an article about the North Chicago Fire Department receiving a grant for new air packs:

The North Chicago Fire Department has been selected to receive a grant from the Illinois State Fire Marshal’s Office in the amount of $26,000. Officials said the funds will assist in the purchase 30 new self-contained breathing apparatus units.

In the world of firefighting, the equipment is essential when entering hazardous atmospheres to control fire quickly and prevent loss of life, according to North Chicago Fire Chief Dell Urban. The equipment includes cylinders, harnesses and face masks that feature heads-up displays and rapid intervention crew universal air connections.

These funds provide a benefit outside of the city as well, because the North Chicago Fire Department shares district borders with the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center and Naval Station Great Lakes. The North Chicago Fire Department is also dedicated to responding alongside neighboring communities through its commitment to the Northern Illinois Mutual Aid Box Agreement System.

“I am sincerely excited for this opportunity, which affords our firefighters the fundamental and critical equipment we use on a daily basis,” Urban said. “This state-of-the-art protective gear gives us the ability to safely perform aggressive interior attacks, accomplish rescues of trapped and injured occupants, and provide protection from the obvious hazards of firefighting.”

 

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New contract for North Chicago firefighters

Jan 12

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

The Lake County News Sun has an article about a new contract for the North Chicago firefighters.

The North Chicago City Council on Monday unanimously approved a new five-year contract with the city’s firefighters’ union.

The agreement calls for an 11.5 percent wage increase over the life of the contract, which ends in 2017.

“I think it was a fair contract for both sides,” Mayor Leon Rockingham said on Tuesday, Jan. 7. “Neither side got everything they wanted. But it’s an agreement we can both live with.”

The agreement contains other changes to compensation. Firefighters will now reach the top of their pay scale at nine years, faster than the previous 10 years. Under a new sick leave policy, an incentive of 72 hours pay will be awarded to firefighters who reach an excess of 560 hours with no hours used. Firefighters may accrue up to 1,440 hours of sick leave.

Illinois Association of Firefighters Local 3271 President Josh Monroe, a lieutenant in the North Chicago department, said the new agreement was ratified by the 30-member union on Dec. 10. The vote was 15-8.

“We, of course, want to work with the city, but at the same time, the economy is tough for everybody,” said Monroe, an 11-year veteran of the department.

Bargaining for the new contract, which replaces a four-year agreement that ended last year, began in May 2013.

thanks Dan

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