SFFD

A tribute to former Firefighter Bob Sivertson

l3wis September 18, 2016 3Comments

Another member of heady daze of 1970’s Democratic power has passed and his friend Jim Powers reminds us of his friend Robert Sivertson.

Just before Powers started his September 16, 2016 scheduled Sioux Falls Democratic Forum on talk, he reminded us of Sivertson’s place in South Dakota legislative history.

Cameraman Bruce spent many hours campaigning with Sivertson and his Democratic majority partners back then. We all should appreciate what they tried to do to move the state out or the scandals and problems of the past.

We have Open Meetings and Records laws, an updated, less confusing SD Constitution and something I know looking at the mess it is in now, a more streamlined state government bureaucracy.

More questions arise about our ‘New and Improved’ ambulance service

l3wis June 8, 2016 8Comments

As the Argus Leader reported, there seemed to be some trouble getting an ambulance when most needed.

Sideras stated in the article that “many SFFR members are paramedics”. This ‘may’ be a change from the last contract held by Rural Metro, the fire department paramedics were PROHIBITED from using any of their skills within the city limits.

Was that ban lifted under this contract? Was any Advanced Life Support (ALS) equipment added to the fire trucks for the paramedics to use?

If not, Sideras’s statement is misleading because the paramedics cannot perform any skills other than their EMT-level training (under the old contract).

If the Ambulance company (Paramedics Plus, Rural Metro under the old contract) is in system overload, only they could approve other ambulances to enter the city (such as volunteer service ambulances from surrounding communities, like Med Star, Sanford or Avera) to transport patients to hospitals.

Did this change in the new contract? Wouldn’t this be better than people driving themselves to the hospital? Why wouldn’t the fire department have this decision-making power instead of the company that profits from transporting the people?

Like Mr. Lonneman said, in a tornado or some other major disaster, should we need a private company’s decision to bring in more ambulances? Maybe language has changed in the new contract, I don’t know, but a good question to ask.

It would be in the patient’s best interest to have the ability to call in an ambulance whenever one was needed, Paramedics Plus losing a transport shouldn’t be the City’s concern. If they lose too many transports, they’ll put another ambulance in service.

On a side note. REMSA, should be determining what calls will and won’t count against the ambulance service for that 90% of the time number they have to meet. For example: If the ambulance has to go through construction traffic because 12^th street is torn up, the Q/A person has decided in the past that isn’t the ambulance company’s fault, the construction was caused by the City, so that delay didn’t count against their numbers. Another example: All of their ambulances were out on calls on higher than expected call volume due to a multiple vehicle accident.

The fire department counts these types of calls and doesn’t take them as exceptions for their accreditation and as you probably guessed, Rural Metro always was in compliance with their required 90% times.

It would be interesting to see how many things are now in the new contract that could benefit the SFFR by allowing them to charge PP back for services like fire stand-bys, equipment, code 5 calls, etc.

I have often scratched my head why the SFFD just doesn’t run a public ambulance service that they could set up as an enterprise fund (all the money paid into the service could go in to improving it instead shareholder profits). The Fire Department is already beating the private ambulances to these calls, it is a majority of their calls, and we are already paying for it through our taxes, so why not find a way to save the city money by charging for the service while providing better service then what our private ambulance companies are doing. The city of Los Angeles figured it out, why can’t we?

Firehouse Magazine Article (Guest Post Patrick Warren)

l3wis May 29, 2016 2Comments

BY Patrick Warren, Edited by Scott L. Ehrisman

I wrote an article over a year ago that was finally published in Firehouse Magazine this month. It’s taken them so long to publish that it could be considered old news now:

WELLNESS ARTICLE

One thing that has disappointed me is the City’s unwillingness to admit there’s flaws in its mental health programs for firefighters. Its wellness programs are great. They are far above what most other employees receive I’d imagine, but the reality is firefighting is not like other jobs and fitness/wellness coordinators do not have the training to identify, diagnose, and treat mental health issues.

The fact that the City is in denial became quite clear in the Argus Leader article published on June 5, 2015. Where the fire chief, Jim Sideras listed several “fail-safes” he said are in place to help those who struggle with mental illness, because it is considered part of fitness for duty.

Some of the highlights from the article were:

• Annual medical evaluations to National Fire Protection Association Standards: These physicals are supposed to determine physical and mental fitness for duty. Two years after I was fired and no changes have been made to add the listed mental testing as required by the standard.

• Post Incident Analysis (P.I.A.): This probably sounded great to the public, but any firefighter knows this was pure B.S. to stretch out the list. P.I.A.s have nothing to do with mental health, they are conducted by fire personnel and are a review of fire incidents to ensure policies and procedures were followed and the correct strategies and tactics were used. They make certain all operations were performed safely and are used as learning tools to critique incidents to see if anything could have been done more effectively.

• There is only 1 test on that list done by a person qualified to identify and treat mental illness and it is done at the time of hire.

• Comments Sideras made include “We can’t twist someone’s arm and make them go…” and “If they do not share their information of issues… …the proper level of care or referrals cannot be achieved.” So, translation: expect the person with the mental health issue to self-diagnose that there is a problem, and blame them if they don’t?

So since it was clear to me the City was more interested in defending its actions than making change that might actually help people, I wrote the linked article that was recently published in Firehouse Magazine.

The emails I’ve received from firefighters around the country are all basically the same form of question/comment: “The fire service is a brotherhood, how could your chief prosecute you like that?” Once I explain the perfect storm of us both being up for the fire chief position, him convincing himself I was out for his job, the ethics investigation I submitted*; they understood better: payback.

Criminally prosecuting you is one thing, but when your former employer leaks your case to the media to ensure you are publically humiliated and discredited?  Considering the ethics complaint was never fully investigated but instead “swept under the rug” you might call it whistleblower retaliation.

*Warren filed an ethics complaint against Sideras for undocumented vacation time. Nothing came of the complaint.

Did the Sioux Falls Fire Department attain accreditation due to (former) fire division chief Patrick Warren?

l3wis February 5, 2016 14Comments

Fire Division Chief, Patrick Warren accepts the Accreditation with the Center for Public Safety Excellence representatives.

As you may well know, Fire Division Chief, Patrick Warren was terminated almost two years ago for misconduct while suffering from mental illness. But after two years, his accomplishments still keep popping up. In fact, the mayor went as far as claiming a couple of the Top Wins for 2015 were due to such great leadership at the SFFD;

Sioux Falls Fire Rescue was presented with ISO Class 1 designation and accreditation with the Center for Public Safety Excellence.

Patrick Warren was the accreditation manager on the department for 8 years and successfully got the department reaccredited twice – including this last time they’re counting as a win. When Pat went to the conference in Henderson, NV to accept the award, Sideras supposedly ASKED to him “Do I really need to be there?” Pat told him no, technically he wasn’t required to be there but he was the only fire chief that chose not to be there out of the dozen or so departments that were being accredited or reaccredited. So the Commissioners set up a conference call and made Sideras sit on the phone during the reaccreditation board hearing.

One of Pat’s other duties was ISO compliance. On the City’s last review, the SFFD missed getting an upgraded rating by just a couple of points. Pat knew that opening a new station would be enough to improve our rating. When Mayor Huether finally allowed construction, Pat arranged for the land purchase, made it through station design, and the week after the ground breaking Patrick was terminated. But the ball was rolling, and we were going to improve our ISO rating once the station opened.

One of the items accreditation is based on is response times and improving those response times. In 2013 and 2014, the fire department responded to 90% of its emergency calls (travel time) in 5 minutes 0 seconds and 5 minutes 3 seconds respectively. With the addition of a new station and and another crew, they should be able to at least hold steady on that number if not improve it slightly.

But in a strange twist, Chief Sideras set a goal of 5 minutes 12 seconds. In the accreditation manual it states that is the slowest time you can meet and still be accredited. But what he seems to not understand is the self-improvement process of accreditation. If the department is meeting 5m3s, and he sets a goal of 5m12s, the department will be deemed “not credible” and be required to change that goal to realistic goal. Accreditation is about setting new goals when you reach the existing ones, not setting ones you’ve already met so you can easily meet them and boast about your easy victory.

The chief did the same thing with the ISO measurement of fire loss. In 2013 there was $2.5 million in property damage/loss and in 2014 $3.1 million in property damage/loss. So what did Sideras set as a goal for 2015 and 2016?  Less than $4.4 million. That’s a pretty big increase. Once again another easy goal for another easy win.

If they’re going by ISO and accreditation, I feel like a couple of people mentioned above owe the former fire division chief a big THANK YOU on some very BIG WINS!

Other people besides Warren worked on accreditation also (Battalion Chiefs and the Data Analyst). One of the Battalion Chiefs also happened to be the only other one who knew anything about ISO and helped Warren with it, Mark Bukovich. He’s also the only one who would have known to call ISO and have them come back for the re-scoring the department after the station opened. But I guess when you’re the CHIEF/MAYOR you get to take all the credit.

Former Fire Division Chief Patrick Warren contributed to this article.