Firefighters and friends held a procession and moment of remembrance Tuesday for Hope Sunrise Volunteer Fire Department Chief Brendan Maguire. Fire department members from Hope to Anchorage honored and saluted the procession from the side of the road as it drove by. "Almost all of the Hope community had come out into the roadway and held signs just saying how much they loved Chief Maguire for his family," said Girdwood Fire Department Chief Michelle Weston, "And that was just a heartbreaking moment, I think, for all of us." Maguire, 39, passed away from natural causes on April 2 in Nuiqsut while working on the North Slope, according to his obituary. Colleagues describe Maguire as an inspiring leader with a smile that could light up a room. He was instrumental in getting an ambulance service back up and running in his community of Hope.  

Richard Congdon is a Herkimer County Sheriff's Deputy and a volunteer firefighter for the Salisbury Fire Department. He came up with the idea to re-purpose self-contained breathing apparatuses, or SCBAs, to make masks that can protect against the coronavirus. Congdon says firefighters change their SCBAs every year, so he thought it was a good idea to re-use them to help front line workers. "I sat one day and got think about what we could use for protective gear," Congdon said. I came up with this idea for taking the old SCBAs and getting filters." The filters he is using for the mask are milk filters because they are thick. "I used to be a milk inspector and a farmer so I had the idea of these filters that are heavier so I contacted Mr. Gardinier from Gardinier Dairy Supply about the filters which he has donated graciously for us," Congdon said.  

The $2.2 trillion CARES Act is doing far too little to help the men and women of the fire and EMS service fighting on the front lines during this global pandemic. IAFC President Chief Gary Ludwig continues to receive myriad reports of little or no PPE in fire departments because of depleted inventories and decimated budgets because of overtime to cover those out sick and quarantined. To help the IAFC make its best case to President Trump and Congress for additional federal funding, we have developed the IAFC COVID-19 PPE Readiness & Availability Assessment Survey. Completing the survey should take less than 10 minutes. It is critical that we arm ourselves with data and present it to our federal government representatives to clearly illustrate our desperate needs.  

Social distancing numbers compiled at the University of Maryland indicate D.C. residents are doing better at it than almost any state in the country, and Maryland is not far behind. The numbers were compiled by the Maryland Transportation Institute, which is based at the university. Using privacy-protected data from cell phones along with information from the government and healthcare industry, researchers are giving a "social distancing index" score to every state and county in the U.S. Essentially, a score of zero represents no social distancing, 100 is perfect social distancing. As of Tuesday, Hawaii and New York led the nation with scores of 73, followed by New Jersey with 72, and then D.C. with 71. After Michigan with 67, Maryland was next with a score of 66. Meanwhile, Virginia was tied for 19th in the country with a score of 58, while West Virginia was tied for 34th with a score of 53.  

Phoenix Fire Chief Kara Kalkbrenner says emergency protective gear such as gowns and N95 masks ordered by the Phoenix Fire Department are getting "hijacked" before they ever arrive in Arizona. Kalkbrenner's comments came Tuesday after 12 News asked her about a photo posted on Facebook showing two Phoenix firefighters responding to a recent emergency wearing rain ponchos instead of protective gowns. First responders are advised to cover their uniforms while helping the public to prevent the spread of coronavirus. "We have ordered millions of dollars of personal protective equipment that keeps getting hijacked before getting to the City of Phoenix," Kalkbrenner said. For now, Phoenix firefighters have sufficient masks, gloves and protective glasses but do not have protective gowns, Kalkbrenner said.  

Using automation developed by a staff member, the Garland, Texas, Fire Department can better inventory its thousands of assets and comply with regulations. "We track everything from large equipment like our apparatus -- our fire trucks, our engines, our ambulances, our staff vehicles -- all the way down to the Band-Aids," said Debbie Watson, senior business process analyst and citizen developer at the department. The department used to track inventory with spreadsheets, a Microsoft Access database and pencil and paper, she said. "We found that when we asked questions like, ‘How much hose do we need to buy this year because it's going to be coming to end of life?' we couldn't answer that question in a timely manner." Another pain point was the annual audit by the Texas Commission of Fire Protection.