KVFD Logs Busy, Effective Year

The Kimball Volunteer Fire Department had a relatively busy year according to Fire Chief Rick Wynn’s year-end report to the City Council at their meeting on December 19.

In total, the Fire Department had 55 calls putting in 1,068 volunteer hours which consisted of 11 city calls, 38 rule board calls, four mutual aid calls to Dix and two mutual aid calls to Bushnell.

According to Wynn, the number of rule board calls, which include Interstate calls, could have been much higher if the state had not taken preventative measures in recent years to close down sections of the interstate during times of bad weather conditions.

“Accidents on the interstate have declined considerably since they put up those gates and started closing down the interstate when the conditions are bad. Before that, we would have 60 some calls a year. It’s a lot better now,” Wynn said.

The only city call that included a structure on fire was the call to Ridgewood Mobile Home Park where a trailer caught fire in November. The rest of the cities calls consisted of car accidents and minor fires throughout the town such as dumpster fires and garbage can fires, according to Wynn.

Wynn also updated the council on the state of the fire department’s equipment.

“All your equipment is in really good shape. I think your oldest truck is a ’96. You have a brand new back up pumper which you purchased with the rule board. So you’re in good shape,” Wynn said.

The Fire Department also boasts an impressive response time for the past year.

“Our response time to any incident in city limits is three minutes. For a town of our size, that’s really good,” Wynn said.

Wynn also went on to talk a little bit about the new recruits to the department.

“We’re doing good. We’re up to 33 volunteers right now. We’ve got a good group of young guys,” he said.

“We got some training to do. Some of them don’t know a lot, but the best teacher is experience,” the chief continued. “We’ve got a handful of guys who have 15 or 16 years of experience. We’ve got a few who have 20. So we have some experience on there.

“We just have to help the young guys,” Wynn said.

Wynn took a moment to express his appreciation to the council for helping to fun the Shop with a Cop program this year.

“We’d like to thank the council for their contribution to Shop with a Cop. You guys are going to help make some kids here really happy in a couple of days. We cook for them and do all that down at the fire hall and we really appreciate you helping out with that,” Wynn said.

The city council approved a motion requested by Wynn to ratify the Kimball Volunteer Fire Department officers and members.