By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
Despite a busy year at the Hays Fire Department, Chief Ryan Hagans said he thought the year went well.
“It was another great year at the fire department,” Hagans said.
As far as emergency responses, he said the department was dispatched to just a little more than 2,600 calls in 2021 — about seven calls per day.
“It’s been a busy year on the call volume,” Hagans said, “but to be expected to like everything else, and we expect the numbers to go up over the years.”
Those calls included fires in the city, but also, he said the department is proud to assist Ellis County Emergency Medical Services.
“We run hand-in-hand with Ellis County EMS, which is a great partnership for us and for the community,” Hagans said, noting firefighters are also trained EMTs and can assist as needed.
During the year, the department benefited from the purchasing of new equipment that will assist the department with fighting fires well into the future.
“We did have a couple of additions to our fleet this year. We were able to add in a little 300-gallon grass fire unit. That's something that his fire department hasn’t had for a long time,” Hagans said.
The new equipment is self-contained, is similar to equipment used by the Ellis County Rural Fire Department and will allow quicker response times to grass fires.
A pickup was also purchased that will transport the department’s mobile air supply.
“So, if we do have a long structure fire or something, we can fill up our air bottles. Instead of bringing them back to the station, we just pull this pickup up and just refill everything out there on scene handy,” Hagans said.
Along with the new trucks, he said some of the department’s radio equipment was also upgraded.
“We're just trying to keep up with what's available out there,” Hagans said, “so we have the best that we can afford to have.”
A part of that communication equipment that is used to increase department efficiencies are iPads that have replaced pen-and-paper business inspections.
“Some of the stuff we don't have to go back and revisit the businesses. They can just send us a picture of anything they had to fix in an email,” Hagans said. “It saves us time and saves them time.”
Equipment aside, he said the department also spent significant resources this year on continuing training for the department.
“We do a lot of training for all different types of emergencies,” Hagans said. “So far, the guys have logged over 9,200 hours of training this year.”
While some of that training occurs locally, he said members of the department also traveled for advanced training and were able to bring those skills back to Hays to be shared with other members of the department.
“That works out very, very well for us,” Hagans said.
For the local training, Hagans said the department’s new training facility has allowed for more complex training scenarios.
“There's a three-story drill tower out there made out of Conex boxes,” Hagans said. “We use one Conex box for a live burn training.”
Once completed, the ongoing construction of an on-site classroom will allow for even more training opportunities.
“We've partnered up with NCK Tech and Fort Hays to construct a classroom out there,” Hagans said. “So that project is moving along with the classroom. Hopefully, here next year, we'll be able to get that completed, and it'll be able to host different types of trainings out there. [It will be] open to different fire departments throughout the state and have some classes.”
Also looking ahead to next year, Hagans said the Front Door Fridays program will continue, giving area residents an opportunity to interact with department members and explore their equipment.
“It's kind of an open house event if you want to just call it that,” he said. “We started running that May through October on like the third Friday of the month from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. That has been great. We had so many people, I think it was September or October maybe, we had 100 people show up. Bring family, bring your kids and let them crawl around.”
It’s a fun way for the department to show their appreciation for a supportive community.
“The community support that we received this year and over the past years has been just great,” Hagans said.