NFD announces promotions

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Two retirements have had a ripple effect allowing the Nevada Fire Department to promote four members and open up two slots for others.

Nevada Fire Chief Robert Benn said lieutenants Kevin Scott and Tim Bullard have been promoted to captain to join Bill Thornton, engineers Noah Weber and Kelly Wingert have been promoted to lieutenant joining John McGraw. Taylor McClintock is the lone engineer, for now.

Firefighters A.J. Terry, Gabe Franklin, Brandon Leer and Jeremy Merrick can vie for the engineer posts but must meet some mandated training and experience requirements before they can be promoted.

The fire department is organized with four on-duty members; one captain, one lieutenant, one engineer and one firefighter.

Each firefighter works a 24-hour shift, then is off for 48 hours, which results in two weeks of 48 hours and one week of 72 hours, which averages out to 56 hours a week on-duty, and that is just for scheduled time, Benn said.

When an alarm is called in the on-duty shift responds and the call goes out for someone to come in to be backup. It isn't unusual for full and part-time firefighters to log dozens, if not hundreds, of extra hours during the year.

The department responds to more than fires, in fact fires are way down the list when it comes to the various types of calls the department responds to. They respond to automobile accidents and other calls where their expertise is needed to extricate people from dangerous situations.

Almost all of the members of the department are at least Emergency Medical Tech-nicians so they can give emergency medical attention. A large percentage of the calls the department gets fall under the broad category of miscellaneous service calls that can't be put into specific categories.

The department is committed to saving the lives and property of the area's citizens and to do that it needs the help of the public. One way the public can help is simply checking with the fire department to see if conditions are right before lighting an open fire. When the winds are high or conditions dry enough a small fire can become a big problem. The department has a page on the Nevada City Web site, www.nevadamo.org.

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