Please join us Saturday October 8 from 10:00am to 2:00pm for the Annual BGFD Fire/EMS Open House.

You will have an opportunity to meet the men and women of Blooming Grove Fire/EMS and Tour your new Firehouse!

There will be food and games and something for the entire family to enjoy!

-A Mogadore firefighter risked his life to save two others on Sept. 23, and the rescue was captured on dash cam video, according to WSBT-TV.

Firefighters Ben Stasik and Nick Sansom responded to the afternoon blaze in the 3400 block of Curtis Street where a man told them that his wife and son were trapped inside the fully engulfed home.

Sansom worked to knock down the flames in order for Stasik to enter the home but they soon realized they didn't have much time.

"I heard (the wife) scream, and that's when I made the decision to go inside without a hoseline and see if I could locate her," Stasik told the news station. His fire chief said the decision was a dangerous one, but commended him for his bravery.

"It's a tremendous thing when a fireman lays down his hose," Mogadore Fire Chief Don Adams said. "That nozzle is there to protect him and to go past it; you're laying it all on the line."

Stasik was able locate and rescued the victim in zero visibility and then re-entered the home to rescue the son who was hiding in the basement.

"That's a good feeling, something I'll carry with me the rest of my career," Stasik said.

Once the victims were pulled to safety and transported to a local hospital, Stasik and Sansom continued to knock down the flames along with other nearby departments that responded.

--More than 30,000 police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians who toiled in the smoldering wreckage at Ground Zero suffer physical or mental health problems today, health officials say. 

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--America's Bravest As You've Never Seen Them Before!

Maybe you've heard firefighters can cook. Now you will meet and cook along with America's best Firehouse Chefs. Come on board with Captain (and Paramedic) Eddie Sell, who along with his 17 years experience as a firefighter, went to culinary school in the U.S. Navy and served as personal chef to an Admiral..MORE

--There is a big push nationally to improve wellness, fitness, and safety and it cannot come at a better time. When I entered the world of public safety more than 12 years ago there was a persona or a strut, call it a calm and cool street smart. 

As a young medic it was something I envied yet did not fully understand, but it was something that I craved to have. Having grown up in a busy urban EMS system, I was taught and directed by a steady stream of wise and experienced paramedics, firefighters and EMTs.

 I was taught the way it's done and, as I have learned, it's the way that it has always been done. After a few years on the street as a part-time paramedic, I came to realize that the way that things are done are definitely not the way things should be done. For instance, the stretcher was a source of trepidation because no one had taken the time to teach me the proper way to handle it. Using the cot seemed to be an assumption on the part of my teachers and field training officers, and many of us green medics just had to figure it out. 

The same held true for patient handling, specifically transfers and the arduous task of lifting a patient from the floor onto the stretcher; we just got it done and that means as fast as possible. I think we caused a lot of lateral whiplash to out infirmed patients. 

Fast forward to the present day and I have become one of the few voices out there calling for change. We as a profession must stop doing things because that is the way we have always done them. 

Doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result is pure insanity. Take a look around, look at your friends, co-workers, and maybe yourself. Stay in public safety long enough and a few predictable things happen. Stress, call volume, fatigue, and poor nutrition all take a cumulative toll. You are no longer a lean, mean EMS or firefighting machine; you have slowly morphed into an overweight and sedentary professional. 

You possess all the necessary tools to get the job done: experience, street skills, a sixth sense honed from thousands of calls, and that swagger that you so desired as a newbie. But achieving all that has also taken its toll on your health, fitness and wellness. 

There is a big push nationally to improve responder wellness, fitness, and safety and it cannot come at a better time. But is it possible to simply write a curriculum, train some facilitators, teach some courses and expect ingrained change to occur? It's not, in my humble opinion. Sure, there may be some outliers and obvious successes but, as I have found in countless discussions, after a short time the crews will fall right back into those old habits. 

Responders, we need to look at this problem differently. First, responders must be taught and encouraged to not eat the foods that they do. I have heard countless excuses and justifications about why responders eat as they do, and I have to tell you it is nothing but laziness. I teach an entire course on how to stay healthy, eat well, and keep the pounds off while on duty, and I can attest that it's not difficult, expensive, or time consuming. Responders must be taught how to survive their job through integrating good nutrition while on duty.

Second, responders need to be taught some basic on-duty fitness tricks. There are six stretches that must be done throughout the shift. By doing these simple stretches between calls (using the back of the truck as your stretching station) you can drastically reduce your chance of injury. As an added benefit, teaching responders public-safety-specific exercises will reduce soft tissue injury. 

Responders can also do a series of exercises on-duty and in uniform that will help them stay fit. Worried about equipment or having to secure a grant? No problem! A gym can be put into a station for less than $300. A resistance band, a stability ball, some dumbbells, a tennis ball and a Frisbee are all you need. Exercising on duty must be considered standard operating procedure. For those administrators or HR folks worried about liability from an on-duty injury, I ask: what does all those back injuries, medical claims, overtime, shift differentials, un-manned units cost? Worrying about an employee getting injured while exercising totally misses the point.

--Incident commanders must always weigh the costs and benefits of vertical ventilation.

Editor's note: Dallas Fire-Rescue Lt. Todd Krodle died Sunday after falling through the roof of a burning apartment building. While investigations will be ongoing, the tragedy is a general reminder of the dangers involved when conducting vertical ventilation..

 As with any firefighter line-of-duty-death, it will take quite a while before the details of this incident are completely understood. Regardless of the specific circumstances around this tragic event, we already know that vertical ventilation can be a risky evolution, even when performed by experienced and skilled firefighters. Incident commanders must always weigh the costs and benefits of vertical ventilation, along with other ventilation options, when selecting fireground strategy and tactics. Garden apartment buildings of this vintage and construction type can be found all across the United States, in cities and counties of all sizes. Along with the usual list of size-up considerations, understanding building construction features is critically important for both ICs and company officers tasked with performing vertical ventilation. Developing this familiarity requires ongoing professional development, area familiarization, and a constant willingness to train. As the late Frank Brannigan used to say, "know the enemy." We all stand with Dallas Fire-Rescue and Lt. Krodle's family...