Chief’s Tailboard Talk for September 2022

Hello Theodore Dawes community,
Once again, I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard in my case and attempt to spread some words of wisdom or simply let you know what is happening within your Theodore Dawes Fire Rescue Department. If you follow us on Facebook or our webpage you will see our run volume for each month. It speaks for itself and the men and women of the TDFR are always ready to respond and serve. I have made joined a few of the emergency calls here in the Theodore Dawes community and would like to applaud everyone for their observance and respect for responding emergency vehicles. It has been my experience thus far that everyone I have encountered are very good about yielding the right of way to the emergency vehicles. For all of us who operate our vehicles, I would like to say THANK YOU. Your attentiveness to our responding emergency vehicles helps us decrease our response times and arrive on scenes faster.
Switching gears and changing subjects, I would like to briefly talk about Hurricane Season. Yup, it’s still with us folks, while I’m sure you’re being bombarded with ads and commercials telling you how many days until Christmas, here’s one you may have not heard.
As of this first day of September, there are 91 more days of Hurricane Season.
It’s been a slow season thus far, although with all the rain we have had you wouldn’t know it, but we cannot let our guard down. Always be vigilant to what is going on out on the waters. Our local meteorologists do an outstanding job of keeping the community informed, so please pay attention to their forecast and be ready to act. Take time to have a family meeting and develop a plan: whether it be to evacuate or stay put, have a plan. Stock up on food, water, and items that will help get through an extended period of power outage and running water. As a storm gets closer it’s also a good idea to reorder any vital medications to prevent you from running out during the recovery time. We also want the community to know that while we are here to serve, there will come a point during a direct impact storm, that we will be unable to respond. We must consider the safety of the responders, if something happens to them, then no one is served. During the height of a storm, calls are typically stacked at communications and once the danger has passed response will resume and calls are dispatched by priority of need.
Just in case you were wondering it’s 115 days until Christmas.
Thank you all for the Opportunity and stay safe,
Chief Byrd