Send me a text and give me feedback on this episode!
Get ready to peel back the layers of Hanford's firefighting operations with new Fire Chief Daniel Perkins at my side. We're confronting the city's burning questions about our first responders' stretched-thin resources and what it takes to douse the flames of a department in need. From the heart of the community's pulse, we'll reveal the ins and outs of the daily heroics that safeguard our streets, and the strategy Chief Perkins has ignited to spark a turnaround. All while keeping an ear to the ground on the latest city shake-ups, including Kalish Morrow's council departure leaving the Hanford City Council with just three members after June 4th.
But our conversation doesn't stop at staffing woes. Tune in for a deep-dive into how Hanford's recent ISO rating slip is fanning the flames of change, with repercussions that ripple through residents' wallets and the city's safety net. We're breaking down the clockwork precision required for emergency response, the stealthy threat of illegal fireworks, and the road map to rekindling the department's former glory. With Chief Perkins in the hot seat, expect a candid look at the challenges and triumphs of firefighting in Hanford, where every second counts.
You can find the Hanford Insider at www.hanfordinsider.com and on social media at @hanfordinsider
Thank you for supporting the show!
Send me a text and give me feedback on this episode!
Get ready to peel back the layers of Hanford's firefighting operations with new Fire Chief Daniel Perkins at my side. We're confronting the city's burning questions about our first responders' stretched-thin resources and what it takes to douse the flames of a department in need. From the heart of the community's pulse, we'll reveal the ins and outs of the daily heroics that safeguard our streets, and the strategy Chief Perkins has ignited to spark a turnaround. All while keeping an ear to the ground on the latest city shake-ups, including Kalish Morrow's council departure leaving the Hanford City Council with just three members after June 4th.
But our conversation doesn't stop at staffing woes. Tune in for a deep-dive into how Hanford's recent ISO rating slip is fanning the flames of change, with repercussions that ripple through residents' wallets and the city's safety net. We're breaking down the clockwork precision required for emergency response, the stealthy threat of illegal fireworks, and the road map to rekindling the department's former glory. With Chief Perkins in the hot seat, expect a candid look at the challenges and triumphs of firefighting in Hanford, where every second counts.
You can find the Hanford Insider at www.hanfordinsider.com and on social media at @hanfordinsider
Thank you for supporting the show!
On this week's episode of the Insider, Rob gets a chance to sit down with the new chief of the Hanford Fire Department, Daniel Perkins. We'll have a community news update and review some upcoming events and I'll be back to update you on the final week of high school baseball and softball regular season action and look at the first round matchups in the Central Section playoffs. This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, May 13th.
Speaker 2:Hello Hanford, welcome to this episode of the Hanford Insider. I'm your host, rob Bentley. Thanks for listening. This week's episode is a little longer due to the lengthy interview with Chief Perkins, but I challenge you to listen to the entire show, even if you have to take a break and resume it later. It's that important I promise you. The weather this week is going to be very warm, with temperatures in the mid to high 90s all week long.
Speaker 2:In community news, the Hanford City Council met last Tuesday At the study session. They received a final report from the Revenue Measure Committee about the need for additional funds for public safety, roads, parks and infrastructure. The Council will now move forward with the measure to place it on the November ballot. At the regular meeting there was a lengthy discussion regarding the removal of nine mid-block crosswalks in downtown Hanford. I encourage you to go to the City website at hanfordcity and watch the recordings of the proceedings from the meeting. There were so many speakers during the public comment portions of the meeting that it actually didn't finish up, so we'll be taking up some of the agenda items at a special meeting this Thursday, may 16th. I'm sure one of the big topics will also be the resignation of Councilwoman Kalish Morrow. She announced on Wednesday that her family had purchased a new home in Louisiana and will be moving in June. We'd like to wish Kalish the best in her new adventures in the bayou. This leaves just three council members. After Councilwoman Diane Sharp recently relocated to Colorado with her family, the council at that time decided to leave her council seat vacant until the November election. Now, with the departure of Kalish Moro, they may have to appoint council members. We'll know more about that next week. It's also great to hear that the city and Southern California Edison have been working together to get the signal lights of 11th and Grangeville up and running again. There was an equipment failure that necessitated replacement of equipment. Word has it that the repairs will be completed by the end of the week of equipment. Word has it that the repairs will be completed by the end of the week.
Speaker 2:Here are some things coming up on our community calendar. At the Thursday Night Marketplace this week the band Caliphous, a Tex-Mex band, will be playing. On Friday there's a cycle swap at the King's Fairgrounds beginning at 11 am On Saturday. Walk with a Doc will be held at 9 am at Centennial Park. Hanford High School will be hosting a mental health 5K run on Saturday, may 25th at 8 am, beginning at Hanford High School. Register today at gofancom. On Friday, may 31st, hanford Board Brush will be holding a fundraiser for the SPCA. You'll be able to pick your own project for this event. Visit their website at boardandbrushhanfordcom for more details.
Speaker 2:I'll be grabbing events as I see them on the Hanford Sentinel calendar and social media pages. If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together. Send your information to hanfordinsider at gmailcom. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events. Well, how great is it to be here with our new fire chief, mr Daniel Perkins. Welcome to Hanford, daniel. Thank you, daniel. Nice to be here. Hey, daniel, I understand that you have a lot of fire experience in the area, recently coming from Kingsburg. What have you found out about the Hanford Fire Department so far in your short stint here so far?
Speaker 3:Well, this is right. At week seven currently and again coming from the city of Kingsburg, being their fire chief for five years, but also living in the community here is you have really great people doing great things with the minimal tools that they have to do their job. And when I say minimal tools, they are truly, truly understaffed. They are definitely overworked. So I think that's part of some of the things we're trying to solve in this very, very near future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to get into that. We're going to get into that for sure. Can you tell us a little bit about your background in firefighting? We had a chance to visit before the interview and I know that you were a musician that kind of gravitated towards the fire department. But how did that happen? What got you interested in firefighting?
Speaker 3:So, ironically, one of the things that got me interested in the fire service was being in scouting. So I was a Boy Scout meet Eagle Scout. On my trek to Eagle one of the things I did come across was I had to do a merit badge for at the time called firemanship. I did the firemanship merit badge and went, did a ride along with Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedics. I did one ride-along and instantaneously changed the direction of my life. I thought I was going to be able to go get a scholarship in music and go to be a forester, go to Northern Arizona University and enjoy my life in the forest. But, as all things you know, God has a different direction for you sometimes and you don't know it until it happens. So, ironically enough, did that and never looked back.
Speaker 2:So let's get into some of the specifics regarding Hanford and public safety. So you told me about some of the things that you've learned so far, but let's dig a little deeper. What are some things about the Hanford Fire Department that you think the community needs to know?
Speaker 3:I think one of the really essential things that everyone needs to know is that we are truly at a crisis crossroad. And when I say crisis crossroad, we in the fire service deal with crises all the time, and for me to say this is a crisis, that's a pretty big deal. I mean that by coming here, we have 10% less staffing than we did in 1990. We used to have 11 people on every day in 1990. And here in 2024, 34 years later, we have nine people on. So just doing the math, that's nearly a 10% decrease in daily staffing. Just doing the math, that's nearly a 10% decrease in daily staffing.
Speaker 3:We went from a community that was the size of about 23 to 25,000 people to now three times that size. So we're 300% increase in population. Our call volume at that point was around 300 plus calls in 1990. In 1990, today we're running almost 7,000 calls. That's a 2,000% increase in call volume, with fewer people than we had staffing by six. So we would have 15 firefighters on and that would give us enough to fight a residential structure fire without requiring the county to come help us At this point. If the county did not come help us, we would be in dire straits. We would not be able to control a basic fire. It would take much longer and the possibility for it spreading to additional rooms or additional buildings would be very high.
Speaker 2:And I know that the recent rash of fires caused by homeless people in the areas, say, behind Walmart downtown, some of the areas in town that have experienced these fires how has that put a strain on resources?
Speaker 3:In the last 10 days alone. What was it be? A week ago, saturday, we had a fairly significant fire that happened in the currently vacant downtown movie theater. That one was directly caused by the unhoused community that got up on the roof, went through the air conditioning units, built a fire in the ducting and the air conditioning that also got into the attic space there. But on the Thursday before that we had a significant fire that burned about five acres, threatened some commercial businesses. That was just to the southeast of the Walmart area and again, that's primarily where all of our unhoused population is.
Speaker 3:And although we don't have a specific suspect, we do know that there's no other natural cause. But there's no electrical line down, it's a human element cause. These fires really tax our services here because we barely have enough people to run the current calls. That would naturally happen in a community with people paying attention to fire safety practices. And when I say barely, again, we're 50% of the normal of any other fire department that would serve and protect the same size of city. So it's a critical staffing stage.
Speaker 3:If we add on to that the unhoused population that moves from place to place, lighting other fires for warmth or cooking, anything like that, and we add to that our inability to get out to the public to tell them about cleaning up their vacant lots, having other issues that involve code enforcement, with overcrowding all your backyard spaces, letting weeds grow too high, having a lot of yard art for lack of a better term that becomes really hazardous to other neighbors. We can't control fires of that nature. We just don't have the people. And it really makes it so that we take a defensive posture, which means basically, we're not entering into the home because we don't have the people. And it really makes it so that we take a defensive posture, which means basically we're not entering into the home because we don't have the people or the resources or it's not safe for us to do so. So for us to protect a home, we have to be able to get inside it, and to do that we have to have enough people. We barely have enough people to do a normal residential structure fire if we add the county's resources, but without them we can't do any of that. So we're really, in a lot of ways, our hands are tied legally.
Speaker 3:The city of Hanford firefighters have done an amazing job with the tools that they've been given and really held fast for so long in the same position to make sure that we don't lose whole sections of the community. But as our community continues to grow at a breakneck pace, we don't going to have those options. Those fires are going to be uncontrollable from place to place and with the added element of the unhoused coming in, possibly adding, you know, other fires during the middle of day or at odd times, we may have fires that extend into backyards, light, all of that yard art on fire moves from house to house and we add a little bit of wind and a little bit of heat, and now we're going to lose multiple homes or businesses. And that's really what we're talking about when we say we're at a crisis crossroads.
Speaker 2:Daniel, the railroad is a huge issue in Hanford. People talk about the crossings and I learned in my CERT training that with the trains we also have a tremendous amount of chemicals and stuff that are going through town. What if there was some kind of God forbid like a derailment or an accident that caused some kind of leak in one of these containers that are rolling through town on these 40 trains a day?
Speaker 3:kind of leak in one of these containers that are rolling through town on these 40 trains a day. Interestingly enough, I think one of the things to talk about when we're talking about this crisis crossroads, one of the things we do in the fire service is we do community risk assessments. In the next 60 days, one of the things that I've been tasked to do is to give an evaluation about the current guiding document that's sitting as a draft document it's only it's about two years old but to really go through that document and basically give a professional recommendation on whether or not we would adopt that. One of the elements of that community risk assessment looks at many things fire station locations, deployment models, staffing models and, again, with us being at 50% of the recommended staffing. So when we have nine firefighters on a day, if we were to have a train derailment, we wouldn't have enough people other than to just help block off the area and get people out of the way.
Speaker 3:In addition to that, because we only have those nine people, approximately four years ago or maybe three years ago, I'm not exactly sure the Hanford Fire Department did have a hazardous materials response unit, with many of our folks trained in hazardous materials. However, because of budget constraints and the inability to maintain the vehicle, that vehicle was given back to the region. So that region being Visalia, tulare, the two-county Tulare and Kings County operational area that hazardous materials unit was given back to another larger department, visalia, and the thought process was well, if we have a larger scale incident we would have them come. But if we look at the dynamics of something like that, the ability for us to respond immediately and to affect a salient response, something that's really going to make a difference, is really predicated on the ability to train, to look at those situations and say we have the ability to do something within the first 30 to 45 minutes. If it's going to take them more than an hour, as is projected, for them to come with their type two hazardous materials team, a type two team won't handle or won't be able to handle a large scale rail incident. They would have to call the next larger team, which is in Fresno, which, as being a member of that team for 12 years at the city of Fresno hazardous materials team and being a captain on that response unit, I do know that they do have the ability to help with those types of incidents, but the staffing alone, for that would be amazingly difficult for us to amass. That would cripple our city.
Speaker 3:In addition to that, two-thirds of our department sits on one side of the tracks, so two of our stations, station one and station two, sit on the west side of the track I'm sorry, the east side of the tracks whereas the other ones sit on the west side of the tracks, which really doesn't allow us to respond in any true fashion. If the railroad were to bisect the community, it would be catastrophic, to say the least. I actually misspoke on that. Two of the stations are on the west side and one's on the east side. We're on the east side, they're on the west side. Station two sits on the other side of the track.
Speaker 2:So that affects response times Absolutely. We were talking about minimal staffing. We've seen it happen even recently, with these trains getting stuck in the middle of town. Can you tell us I mean, that just must be an awful feeling for the firefighters to be there waiting for the train to clear so they can get to someone who's maybe in an accident or a medical emergency? Absolutely.
Speaker 3:The train, when it does stop on the tracks or when it comes through town, has to slow down because it does have a curve toward the end of it. They have to slow down to between 35 and 40 miles an hour, which then makes it take even longer for it to go through. And on a daily basis Hanford has about 40, that's four to zero trains go through Hanford. That means at any point in time we could have a train that is a mile and a half two miles long coming through town, delaying any response times and when our response times have already been decreased because or actually, sorry, increased because of our inability to not only meet the demand of the calls but because we're so far away and we're already on other calls.
Speaker 3:Right now we're only meeting at about 33% of our calls on time. That means anything less than six minutes to amass an effective fire force. Anything beyond that, we're severely hampered. The typical national average or the goal would be to get a fire unit there within four minutes and have responders start taking action. We're not even close to that. We get further alarm on the continuum. Over the last five years it's basically gone from 53% that we were missing up to 66% of those calls now are not met on time because we don't have the ability to have the people or the stations in the right places to meet the need of the growing community.
Speaker 2:Wow, can you tell us a little bit about how your department is planning to approach and react and respond to these events when people call in calls of illegal fireworks?
Speaker 3:I think it's really important first to start talking about the impact of illegal fireworks. Many people assume that well, it's not really that bad. I didn't see it catch anything on fire, therefore it must not have caught anything on fire. I didn't see it catch anything on fire, therefore it must not have caught anything on fire. I can tell you that every year throughout the United States there are numerous tragic results of fireworks not only illegal fireworks, but in many states they're legal but fireworks in general are dangerous in and of themselves. Even safe and sane fireworks that are not used in a safe and sane manner can be very dangerous. So I think one of the things to talk about in that is really being responsible, thinking about what's going to happen downwind, downrange of this flaming piece of aerial celebration that we have, and think about what it might do to someone else if we have any type of wind at all. Any little ember from an aerial firework and again, any any firework that becomes aerial greater than and I'd have to say this with any reasonable certainty, I think it's five feet, is a safe and sane firework. It may be between five and six feet, but anything greater in height than that that's not a safe and sane firework. It may be between five and six feet, but anything greater in height than that, that's not a safe and sane firework. That's an illegal firework and that causes that ember to get up, move into the next layer of movement of air, which are called the 20 foot winds. Once it gets to that 20 foot wind, that ember is going to travel at great distance. It's going to drop on the ground and start a fire, distant to where you may be doing your fireworks. So you think, well, nothing's ever happened.
Speaker 3:When I did it, no one got hurt. Well, unbeknownst to you, it's traveled, you know, a half a block away, gotten onto someone else's, fallen in next to some dry grass, next to their trash cans. They go to bed and then two o'clock in the morning, like we do every single year, we end up with a trash can fire next to a house that gets up into the attic and now we've burnt down someone's home with someone thinking, well, nothing ever happened. So that connective tissue between an aerial firework that's greater than six feet again that illegal firework is right there. If it doesn't impact them directly, there was no problem, and I think that's really the part of that is it's not going to be seen by you, you're not going to know that it's happening, but the tragic results are that someone may lose their home, someone may even lose their life, and that, to me, it's not worth that type of celebration. Uh, it becomes more of a, a dirge, rather than a celebratory type of music at that point.
Speaker 2:That's certainly great information, Daniel. Really appreciate you filling us in on all of this. I know we talked about staffing, we talked about fireworks, we talked about trains. What are some of the visions that you have for the Hanford Fire Department? Maybe new equipment, obviously more firefighters, training facilities and stuff. What's in the works?
Speaker 3:I think it's really important again when we go back to thinking about what's in the works is really based upon that community risk assessment. Once that guiding document is adopted, then we have a blueprint of where we're going and I think across the board, all of the community members want to know that your money is going to a salient plan, an organized, vision-based plan, and it makes sense to do that. That plan in general starts there with that community risk assessment and looking at what do we actually need. One of the things that's recently happened and many people may not be aware, is that insurance service offices, or ISO, does a rating on fire departments and water systems within every city throughout the United States once every five years. So last year sometime, the city of Hanford got their ISO rating. They used to be on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the best, 10x being the worst. They were a 2, which meant that you had some pretty good insurance rates. You had a well-organized fire department. It was meeting the needs of the community for the size. It had ability to go do some different training and the call volume wasn't increased so much so that they couldn't train this last five years because of our decreased ability to meet response times, our inability to build a training facility, our inability to go out and get the things done in a maintenance sense, because again, our call volume has increased exponentially again literally 2 000 percent over the last 20 years. That alone caused us to go backwards in our iso rating from a two to a three.
Speaker 3:Now the actual impact not only is felt within the city's rating. You know's a matter of pride and we're a very traditional prideful group here in Hanford. We're very prideful about doing things ourselves and making sure we're doing the right thing for our community, and it's a difficult thing to swallow when we don't do well. When we do go backwards and we get told, hey, maybe you need to do something different, the unfortunate financial impact is really borne by the community. For each one of those basic movements from a two to a three being downgraded, the estimated cost for most end users for commercial insurance and then also residential insurance is between five and seven percent. So those rates are going to be felt by all of the community members and again, not as a direct. You know I wanted it to be this way or the city wanted it to be this way. This is just an indicator from other folks that look at what's the risk for the community. The community's risk has increased so much so that they downgraded the department in an effort to get them to come back online in the right manner.
Speaker 3:One of those things is to build the training facility. So in this first 90 days, one of the first things you do typically, as any other chief officer, is you come in and you assess what do we have, what are we going to start, what are we going to stop and what are we going to change Immediately for we going to stop and what are we going to change Immediately. For us to change, coming in as an experienced chief officer, is we have to change our training. We have to provide that training and organize directed training specific to the risks we have in the community. We spoke a little bit about the idea of hazardous materials response. We have hazardous materials responders, but we don't have an apparatus or an organized way to train on any of that because we don't have any training props. We don't have a training facility. Our firefighters literally have to drive to Tulare with our fire apparatus to do any sort of organized training on a training structure that we could possibly burn, and that to me, is just not very organized. It's not a good way to do business and it's being told to us by subject matter experts that do insurance service ratings.
Speaker 3:I think in the vision of the department overall is to really establish us not only as a destination city for people to come to but also a destination department. One way that we become a destination department is we provide good working conditions for the people. We have great stations. At this point, the stations we have have been kept up immaculately and again, this is 35 to actually 38 years of fire service experience. Looking at these stations, Our folks do a bang-up job with the stuff they have. They have really been prideful and, in a traditional fire service spirit, hung on to and cared for all of that equipment with great, great pride. We have good fire engines. We have top-of-the have good fire engines, we have top of the line fire engines. But again, our fleet now is well over five years old and as it gets to its 10 year lifespan and almost a 15 year, we will see new fire engines that have come in from good planning but also from additional grant monies. So equipment we're looking pretty good.
Speaker 3:It's the people and the fire stations. We have to have bodies and places to put the bodies for them to be effective and that's really the vision of the department Find a way for us to train the people effectively, get the bodies on the floor. The other element to get that done as well is to really expand our community risk reduction. You spoke to a little bit about being a community emergency response team member. One of the ways we do develop that depth is to develop community emergency response teams, which we will be developing this year. That's one of the visions. They will assist us in doing outreach, which was another low score when we look at all of the community survey results that came out. They really wanted us to be out doing more community-based awareness about fire prevention. So that's one of our main goals there as well. But to also go out and do those fire prevention inspections, that is the primary means by which we're going to decrease any types of fires. We make people aware of what they do in the environment they're doing it and how can we make them safer in that environment that they, that they live, play and work in.
Speaker 3:And that's really our primary goals at this point, in addition to trying to figure out a way to develop additional revenue streams, your creative ways of kind of balancing out our training efforts. Train our people to train others and then we become a destination to come do training. So I think we have a ton of potential. I think I've had the ability to do that in other fire departments, so it's kind of an exciting time to be here in Hanford. It's one of those growth opportunities. We just have to be let to do that, and I think it's really going to take the community's backing when it comes to asking for a change in how we've been doing business and the ability for us to get some sort of revenue measure passed that will improve that ability for us to do the job you've tasked us to do, because without that it just won't happen. There is no plan B.
Speaker 2:We can't kick the can down the road any farther, no no, there's no more can to kick Right you.
Speaker 3:The can's rusted and in bits.
Speaker 2:Daniel, it's been so awesome having you on this show. I've learned so much and I know our listeners are really appreciative of all of the Hanford firefighters and staff members that you have. I know Hanford has given you a warm welcome and I sense that and I know that your department is going to do great things under your leadership, so welcome.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:And now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley.
Speaker 1:Playoff baseball and softball is getting started this week and a handful of our local teams will see postseason action. On the baseball side, hanford High finished their regular season third place in the WIL with a record of 9-6. After dropping their two games to L'Amour last week. The Bullpups are the 12th seed in the Division II playoffs and will travel to St Joseph on Tuesday. Sierra Pacific finished the regular season in third place in the Tri-County Kings League with a record of 7-9, but finished with a 20-9 overall record after picking up a pair of dominant victories over Hanford West last week. The Golden Bears are the seventh seed in Division II and will host Mission College Prep on Tuesday, and for Hanford West, the two losses to Sierra Pacific put an end to their season.
Speaker 1:The Huskies finished fifth place in the Tri-County Sequoia League and 7-20 overall, and in softball action, hanford West secured a four-seed in the Division III playoffs after picking up a pair of wins over Exeter and Sierra Pacific last week. The Huskies will host 13-seed Independence on Tuesday. Hanford High will also see playoff action, despite dropping their two games to Mission Oak and Lemoore last week, as the Bullpups get the 14-seed in Division III and will head to the three-seed Wasco on Tuesday and Sierra Pacific saw their seasons come to an end. After losses to Hanford West and Selma, the Golden Bears finished the year 2-8 in league and 7-20 overall. As always, please send any stats, scores or stories that you want covered to hanfordinsider at gmailcom. I'm Eric Bentley and this has been your.
Speaker 2:Hanford Insider Sports Report. Well, that's all the time we have for this week's show. Be sure to tune in next week to hear my interview with Kings County Superintendent of Schools, todd Bardo, as we recap another great school year. If you enjoyed the show, leave a review on my website. If you'd like to join the Hanford Insider email list, stop by my website at hanfordinsidercom to sign up for updates. You'll also get an exclusive copy of my newsletter in your inbox each week. You can also send me feedback by voicemail through my website, by clicking the microphone icon, or by text message at 559-424-3345. I'd love to hear from you. Your comments may even be shared on the show. I also need your help getting the word out about the show by liking and sharing on social media or telling a friend For more information about the show. You can find this podcast on Facebook, instagram, threads X and YouTube at Hanford Insider. If you have a show idea, be sure to email me at hanfordinsider at gmailcom and I'll look into it. Thanks for listening. Have a great week.