Welcome to the City of Plantation's Podcast. In this Episode, Deputy Chief Joel Gordon and Division Chief Ezra Lubow speak with Plantation Fire Department's Fire Chief, Donald Todd. We discuss various topics regarding actions the Fire Department is taking to address the Pandemic, and how those actions complement, the actions taken by the City of Plantation. This Podcast is aimed at keeping the residents of Plantation informed regarding how the City and its various Departments are responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Please subscribe to this podcast, as we will be producing new episodes on a regular basis.
Guest Speaker: Fire Chief Donald Todd Host: Deputy Chief Gordon / Division Chief Lubow Producer: Ezra Lubow Music: Oakwood Station - Summer Breeze Memories Cover Art: The City of Plantation
Hello plantation. Welcome to the city of plantations podcast. I'm dr Jay formerly with plantation information radio. Thank you for tuning in. We hope the information provided within the episodes of this podcast helped keep you your family and your friends safe during this pandemic.
This week. We are pleased to be joined by our own fire chief Donald Todd jr or as we call him, chief Todd. Chief taught as a lifelong member of the plantation fire department through his short tenure as chief. He's already led the emergency management team through a hurricane and an explosion, but I think even he'll tell you the Covid outbreak has really challenged everyone. We're also joined today by the medicine man himself, EMS division chief Ezra Lubow. We're going to spend some time with chief Todd and chief Lubow discussing the city's overall approach to managing the COVID outbreak, specifically what the fire department is doing to respond and some of the unique challenges that the COVID response presents as opposed to a hurricane or other type of disaster. So chief. Todd, welcome and thank you for taking the time to be with us and to speak with the citizens of plantation. Well thank you for inviting me. How you doing today? Oh, we're hanging in there. You know, we're all dealing with this issue and we're trying to do the best we can.
That's, that's I think all we can count on at this time. So, so chief, if you could start us off with just a summary of the fire department's overall approach to the Corona virus response. And really where we are today.
This is unusual. It's not like a hurricane or tornado or, or other major events. This is something that no one was expecting. We weren't expecting, the country wasn't expecting it, we weren't prepared for it. The country's not prepared for it. So it's a day by day, hour by hour changes that we're trying to stay ahead of and, and we adapt as they come. Some of the challenges we've had has been to make sure that we maintain our PPE cause PPE is in our personal protective equipment. As you can see on the news every day. That
Speaker 1:
Hello plantation. Welcome to the city of plantations podcast. I'm dr Jay formerly with plantation information radio. Thank you for tuning in. We hope the information provided within the episodes of this podcast helped keep you your family and your friends safe during this pandemic.
Speaker 2:
This week. We are pleased to be joined by our own fire chief Donald Todd jr or as we call him, chief Todd. Chief taught as a lifelong member of the plantation fire department through his short tenure as chief. He's already led the emergency management team through a hurricane and an explosion, but I think even he'll tell you the Colvin outbreak has really challenged everyone. We're also joined today by the medicine man himself, EMS division chief as Rolo. We're going to spend some time with chief Todd and chief Lebow discussing the city's overall approach to managing the COBIT outbreak, specifically what the fire department is doing to respond and some of the unique challenges that the COBIT response presents as opposed to a hurricane or other type of disaster. So chief. Todd, welcome and thank you for taking the time to be with us and to speak with the citizens of plantation. Well thank you for inviting me. How you doing today? Oh, we're hanging in there. You know, we're all dealing with this issue and we're trying to do the best we can. I agree
Speaker 3:
best we can and we are hanging in there.
Speaker 2:
That's, that's I think all we can count on at this time. So, so chief, if you could start us off with just a summary of the fire department's overall approach to the Corona virus response. And really where we are today.
Speaker 3:
This is unusual. It's not like a hurricane or tornado or, or other major events. This is something that no one was expecting. We wa we weren't expecting, the country wasn't expecting it, we weren't prepared for it. The country's not prepared for it. So it's a day by day, hour by hour changes that we're trying to stay ahead of and, and we adapt as they come. Some of the challenges we've had has been to make sure that we maintain our PPE cause PPE is in our personal protective equipment. As you can see on the news every day. That is a very valuable commodity right now that no one can get their hands on. So what we're trying to do is implement ways that we can maintain the uses of art equipment are in 90 fives or gowns or gloves or goggles. The things that we wear to protect ourselves from all medical responses, but especially to this virus response, this Corona response, we've implemented Kuvan 19 truck and that is to eliminate exposure to the majority of our EMS division. We specifically only run Hovind suspected patients with that truck. We have issued a specific mass specialized mass to our covert 19 responders, which means we can reuse those over and over cause they're filtered mass that we just have to change out the filters. We don't have to replace the mask so that that allows us to use our[inaudible] that we have a decent supply of, but not enough to carry us through the summer. So we're constantly looking for the[inaudible] mass, like everybody, like every other agency in the city or at night in the city, but in the country. That's what we started. You know, we were the first ones in Briar to do that. And I believe we're the only ones in Broward to do that. We're unique because we are a fully paid EMS division and we're a volunteer suppression division. So we had to come up with ways to isolate those guys. We can't have them in the same area. You've got the social distancing that everybody should be practicing and especially us. And we separate them by, you know, the fire department is a, a community of, uh, brothers and sisters that like to hang out together, eat together, watch TV, movies. But you know, we're having to change our lives lifestyle now. So, and that means that we have to do things different out of the norm. And hopefully this won't take too long for this to, for us to recover from this and get back to what, as close to normal as we can. So chief, as we said earlier, the overall response to the COBIT outbreak has been a challenge. We're really navigating uncharted waters. What were some of the unique challenges faced citywide? Well, like I said before, this crisis has caused us to make it, we have to adapt and overcome on a daily basis. Things change and, and we have to be able to go with the flow to make sure that we were doing what the CDC recommends, their guidelines. We're working with the other cities in the, in the County to try to make it more uniform, plan of attack and how we're going to protect our citizens and our employees from this, from this disease. The unique part of it is that it's, it's for our residents, social distancing. W we're out of our norm. We need to stay or 12 six feet apart. We got to wear our masks. You know, when we're in a public, we no more shaking hands no more. You know, you got, you got to stay away from people that, that are sick and people that are sick need to stay away from people that are healthy, stay at home. Don't, don't go to work. They at home get better. Uh, and that way we can eliminate in other people in fact it, and we can keep our workforce strong. You know, we had to go to essential employees in the city and that means that, you know, all, all employees are essential, but there's some that are actually have to be there that have to be there. The first responders, uh, EMS, fire, police, and then, uh, the other disciplines that keep the city running. They have to come to work, they have to be here. They're essential to keep the city running. And you know, it's, it's, it's been difficult, but it's, it's life changing. It's not going to get better anytime soon. This is, this is something that's going to be with us for probably through our generation, my generation anyways. And it's going to change the way we, um, we do day to day operations and functions and how we, how we deal with each other. So I got to tell you that mayor stoner has put together a very good team. She's got a team of, uh, directors that, that have a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge, and a very dedicated to this city. And we all have one thing in common is protection of the residents in this city and the employees that work here. So you mentioned changing, changing the way we do some things. And I know earlier you talked about some of the changes that we've made. Can we go back over it and look at some of the specific things that we now do differently on a daily basis than we've done before? Are we talking about the department? Are we talking about the city? Both? Well, in the department we talked about the covert truck, you know, being the first, and I believe the only one that brought our County to have the covert truck. I've, we've got a lot of praise for that. I think we were in the forefront to eliminate the exposure to our division and which has actually worked out to our benefit. We also are working on the social decision, like I said, the separation between the suppression and the EMS division and the city. The mayor's put out directives on safer at home and social distancing and gathering of people more than no more than 10 people. We just have to follow these directives and follow the CDC guidelines and recommendations. And as long as we do that, we can keep people healthy. We can, we can get through this. And as soon as that curve starts to flatten out and level off, then of course we can get back to some kind of normalcy and get back to work. You know, our economy's taken a huge hit on this. Eventually we got to get back to work. We got to get the small businesses open again. And a lot of people out there hurting. We know that we just, as a community, we have to realize that and we have to do, we have to help our brothers and sisters that we live, live near our neighbors. We have to help our neighbors. Whatever we gotta do, we have to do. And that's, that's, that's my philosophy.
Speaker 4:
So that leads me into this, and I'm glad you brought that up because I think that everyone looks to the fire departments, to the police departments, to the cities to tell them what to do and how to do it and give them guidance and direction. Right? They kind of, they gravitate towards that. But as you said, it's, it's really a group effort. It's gotta be a combined effort by the city and all of their departments and divisions and the public. So your message to the public to help reduce or eliminate the transmission of this virus, what would your message be?
Speaker 3:
Well, look, things like this seem to bring out the worst in people at times. We have got to overcome that. Just follow the direction of the directors that the mayors put out, what the counties put out, what CDC is recommending, you know, federal recommendations, state recommendations. So we follow those recommendations, you know, that helps the first responders that helps PD, that's helps the fire department just follow the recommendations.
Speaker 4:
So by those recommendations you mean, uh, the, uh, stay at home, unless there are essential activities that you need to engage in, uh, and or some daily exercise, you mean a mask or the cover op? Right. Those are the,
Speaker 3:
yeah, those are the directors of the mayor put out. We know it's uncomfortable. We know it's not popular. It's a, it's very difficult and it's, but you know, it's necessary. It's necessary right now for us to get through this cross fingers and hope that we get through it sooner than later. But it's necessary to do it. We kept the passive parks open so you can still get your exercise as we know it's important to have the, the, you know, just human nature says we got to have contact with one another. So it's important that we still have that contact, but limited, we've got to limit it to, you know, 10 or less people and make sure you keep your distance and, and you know, we'll be, we'll be fine.
Speaker 4:
Everyone's got a role to play, right? We're all in on this and we're all in this together. So, uh, absolutely. Thank you chief for that answer.
Speaker 3:
So chief, what are some of the unique steps we've taken to battle the Corona virus? Well, the first thing we did was start health screening for our employees. We do it twice a day. Um, we also are using our bio planet, which is a piece of equipment that's used to sanitize areas and in our trucks at the stations and throughout the city, we use them in different departments. Um, we've also went to mask, we have to wear our mask and all public places. So every time we're around any, any more than a crowd of two or three, we work, we wear a mask, but we actually wear a mask. Our EMS employees wear their mask all day long. The mayor and the directors get together once a week, sometimes twice a week, depending on how things change. And like I said before, it changes on a daily and sometimes an hourly basis. So we want to keep everybody informed with the latest changes. This weekend, Saturday we're going to do a caravan for the city to show our support to the residents. This is, we're all in this together and, and we want to go out and show you guys that, that we appreciate what you're doing and that we, we support our, our residents of the city of plantation chief. Once again, thank you for spending time with us and please extend our sincere thanks to our brave volunteer firefighters and our EMS folks out there on the front lines, making sure we stay healthy and safe as possible. Oh, you're welcome. You got to remember that we are your neighbors and we were all in this together. We support you 100%. We're behind you 100%. We're going to do what we continue to do, which is, uh, protect life and property. Uh, that's, that's what we do. And we're here for you. We're not gonna go anywhere. We're, we're, we've been here since day one. We're going to be here until this thing is over. You can count on us and, and I know we can count on you. We're in this together. So good luck to everybody. Thank you, chief. Thanks to you.
Speaker 1:
You've been listening to the city of planned patient podcasts here in plantation. We're working hard to bring you the latest, most accurate information available about the Corona virus pandemic. Remember, if you have specific questions, you can email them to ask cityHall@plantation.org don't forget to visit the Cobra 19 page on our website and register forever bridge for up to the minute changes regarding the outbreak. We want to thank you for tuning in and taking the time to listen to the experts about how to keep yourselves, your family, and your business safe and healthy during the prices. And don't forget to wash your hands, cover your cough and maintain a safe distance.