Fire Department Updates

Chief’s Message

This past year brought many unique opportunities and challenges to the Roseville Fire Department. 2021 proved to be our busiest year in the history of our fire department in terms of call volume, a total of 6,246 emergency calls, an increase of more than 13% over our previous busiest year. We continued our battle against COVID19, both in the fire station in an effort to keep firefighters safe and in the community we serve and respond to.
Whether it was procuring and disseminating PPE in the community, responding to hundreds of COVID19-related calls, or even establishing a COVID testing lab for firefighters, City staff, and their families the Fire Department has stepped up big time throughout this pandemic. The organization saw the retirement of Fire Chief Tim O’Neill and a transition of a new leadership team at all levels of supervision. And we had brief moments between waves of the pandemic to engage with our community with block parties, two of our Friday’s with Firefighters, and Open House events.

The following pages will recap and attempt to scratch the surface of the different projects and programs of Roseville Fire in 2021 as we look back at our unique challenges and opportunities as well as look to some big goals in 2022 that will allow us to better serve our community into the future.

SAFER Staffing Grant & New Staffing Model

With the support of the Roseville City Council and City Administration the Fire Department applied for and received a Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant in late 2020. The grant is for over $1.8 million dollars and will pay the salaries and benefits for up to six new firefighters for the next three years (2021, 2022, and 2023). This grant has allowed the Fire Department to add staffing and update our daily staffing model to assist with our ballooning call volume while not immediately impacting the tax payer.
The six new firefighters started their adventure with Roseville Fire in January 2021 with an academy program to prepare them for the day-to-day response and lifestyle of working in the fire station. Upon the completion of their academy the six firefighters were added to the three existing shifts (A, B, and C shift).
The addition of the six firefighters onto shift allowed the fire department to staff three pieces of emergency apparatus 24/7/365; something we have not been able to do in our history. Since 2007 the Fire Department has staffed just two pieces of apparatus, a fire engine and a medical response vehicle. Due to the continued growth of our call volume, the needs of our community was outpacing our available resources. Due to the increased call volume we were experiencing a consistent inability to answer every call for service. Situations would occur in which two, three, even four emergencies would occur in the same time-frame, forcing us to be unable to respond or be delayed to some emergencies.
Starting in January we were able to begin staffing a fire engine and two medical response vehicles with up to eight firefighters on-duty every day. The occurrences of missed or delayed emergency responses has plummeted and our staffing now better meets the needs of the community. This staffing model has also aided dramatically in our ability to perform on-duty fire inspection and prevention responsibilities and decreased the unsustainable high volume of workload on our firefighters.

Fire Chief Retirement & New Leadership Team

In May the Department and City bid Fire Chief Tim O’Neill a healthy and well-deserved retirement. Chief O’Neill was with the Roseville Fire Department for more than 32 years and the Fire Chief for more than 11 of those years.
Chief David Brosnahan took over the reins of the department starting June 1. Chief Brosnahan had served as the Assistant Fire Chief since 2016. Part of the transition of leadership was filling out the remaining positions created by vacancies. Chief Neil Sjostrom was tabbed as the new Assistant Fire Chief; Neil had been a Battalion Chief since 2016. Promotions were then made to Ted Larson and eventually Joshua Waylander to round out the Battalion Chief positions within the department. The department completed a Lieutenant promotional process in 2021. A Lieutenant is the frontline supervisor in the department. They are responsible for the firefighters they supervise and the bulk of the day-to-day shift activities, they report to a Battalion Chief. Three firefighters were promoted to the role of Lieutenant: Daniel Concha, Kevin Priester, and Cody Thornberg.

2021 Call Volume

In 2021 the department responded to 136 fire type incidents including 31 building fires and nearly 30 cooking fires, these emergencies tend to be the types of emergencies that we rely on our neighboring departments to assist as the need for resources is very high. In 2021 we received Automatic or Mutual Aid from our neighboring departments nearly 20 times while we assisted those same agencies approximately 40 times. These averages will fluctuate every year, some years we may see an increased number of mutual or automatic aid responses to assist us, while other years we may respond more times to other agencies. These partnerships are what help us to effectively serve our community, keeping both our citizens and firefighters safe during the most critical of emergency incidents.

4th of July Fires

July 4^th 2021 also brought with it another new record for our fire department and unfortunately it was not one we had hoped to set. Firefighters responded to four separate home fires (impacting 5 different buildings), and 12 additional grass/trash fires between the hours of 10:00PM and 3:30AM all due to improperly used or discarded fireworks. The four home fires caused a significant amount of property damage, while the damage was significant, the quick action and training of the firefighters who responded and assisted on these incidents prevented even further loss. Damage to all of the homes involved was generally isolated to garages and exterior areas of the homes. These emergencies stretched our available emergency response resources thing mutual aid from neighboring fire departments to respond to the significant influx of emergency fire calls throughout the evening hours. While firefighters were exhausted there were no injuries to firefighters or civilians. As a reminder if you are using fireworks please use care to properly dispose of the remains after you use them.
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Community Engagement

Through the pandemic in 2020, the Fire Department had to take a step back from our normal community engagement activities. Community engagement is one of the core components of our department. Many of our firefighters took opportunities to conduct virtual station visits, truck tours, and even public safety education events for the youngest members of our community. While these events were definitely not the same as being able to see a fire truck in person it proved to be a highly successful way for the fire department to stay engaged and continue to spread the fire safety messages that are always so critical.
As we started 2021, we began planning a phase return to our community engagement activities and in late spring kicked it off with a Fridays with Firefighters event that had its highest attendance since the inception of this program. The children and families enjoyed a bounce house, fire hose spraying station, dunking the new Assistant Fire Chief in a dunk tank, and the opportunity to once again see fire trucks and firefighters up close!

We continued the fun into the summer with another Fridays with Firefighters and the annual favorite of visiting nearly 100 Night to Unite block parties and wrapping up with visits back to local child care and school facilities in the early fall as Fire Prevention month began in October. One thing we have learned over the last year is that we need to engage our community online better, so, be on the lookout for a Roseville Fire Department YouTube channel in 2022!

Covid-19 Testing Lab

In October of 2021 the Fire Department identified the need to provide consistent and reliable Covid-19 testing to City staff to reduce the impacts of covid on daily operations. In mid-October the Covid Testing lab began offering tests to all City Staff, by the end of 2021 we had conducted over 750 tests helping to reduce exposures of staff and avoid unnecessary staff outages.

Fire Prevention

Development within Roseville in 2021 continued to remain strong with several large multi-family apartment projects coming to completion. Two notable projects that finished construction and are now beginning to be occupied are The Oasis and The Isaac totaling 355 units just northeast of the County Road C and Fairview Intersection.
These projects took a significant amount of time for our Fire Inspectors during the construction phase, and will now be included in our annual multi-family licensing program. This program requires an annual license for any multi-family rental building in Roseville of 5 or more units. As part of the annual license Fire Inspectors conduct a thorough inspection of the entire building including inside of some of the units, this helps to assure that properties are being properly maintained and that all of the key life safety components of a building are operating properly. While this development is a positive sign for our community, the increased demands placed on our fire inspectors have kept all staff extremely busy this past year.
In addition to new construction, the department went through a lengthy re-licensing process, after license revocation at the Brittany Marion Apartment, located in South East Roseville. A significant investment in the properties by the ownership group and a new property management firm made for a positive resolution and one that both residents and the Fire Department are glad to see completed.
While several of these large projects took a significant focus of our fire prevention staff, we still managed to complete over 450 Fire and Life Safety Inspections in 2021 and anticipate this number to increase significantly as we enter 2022 with significant development occurring and a large number of planned construction projects.

Looking Forward to 2022

We experienced a lot of accomplishments in 2021. This motivates us to continue to look for unique ways to improve our service model both internally for our firefighters and externally to the community. A couple of big opportunities facing us in 2022 will help guide our goal setting as we move forward.
The first is the ALS First Response piece. This could be a complete game changer for the service capacity and capabilities we are able to provide to our community. To have ALS-level care within a few minutes of calling 911 will have a huge positive impact on the survivability of persons having a medical emergency, and will also result in improved hospital outcomes.
Our second is our Firefighter Cadet program. This program is focused on the development of a young firefighter. Hiring someone underrepresented in the fire service and giving them the tools and skills to be successful. While also helping them achieve college credit, mentorship, and real-life job experience this pathways program will be a first for Roseville Fire.
Serving our community is our utmost pleasure and commitment. We are here for our community and want to continue our services we provide to the City of Roseville well into 2022 and beyond.

Year in Numbers

As you can see from the graph above, the majority of our calls are for Rescue and EMS. But here are a few other statistics that might surprise you!

- 466 Fire Inspections completed
- 19 Vehicle Fires
- 18 Fire in Rubbish, including Dumpsters
- 1 Squirrel Saved