Station 1902

Chief Ed Mann: Foreign I want to welcome all our listeners to the Providence Station 1902 podcast. I'm looking forward to what 2025 has to bring and I hope all of you have a great year.

I'm Ed Mann, the Director of Training and Education for Provident, and while I rarely make these podcasts about Me I briefly want to share a bit about my background, if for no other reason than just to let you know that I do have some understanding of emergency services.

I retired from the Air Force as a Fire protection specialist in 1994. I'm a retired volunteer Fire Chief. I served as the Pennsylvania State fire commissioner under four governors for 14 and a half years.

I actively served the First Respond First Responder center for Excellence as a volunteer. I serve on an advisory committee to the Firefighter Injury and Safety Trends Program at Drexel University and I've been employed by Providence for 10 years.

So I'm most happy to have Chief Al Yancy from the Minooka Fire Protection District, a combination fire department located in Minooka, Illinois with us as our guest for this podcast.

I met the Chief when he became an active board member on the Volunteer Combination Officer section of the International association of Fire Chiefs. Chief, welcome to the show. Please tell our listeners about yourself and your career thus far in the fire service.

We'll chat about your department in the next few questions.

Chief Al Yancey: Thanks Ed. It's always great to sit and visit with you. I appreciate you inviting me onto the podcast.

Yeah, I started as a volunteer recruit way back in 1988 and small volunteer department in Southern Illinois and while I served there I rose through the ranks as a Lieutenant, became Deputy Chief and then I was fortunate enough to become the first full time chief and administrator of that department.

Being a small department, it meant that I mopped the floor, I drove the fire engine and I did all that stuff all at the same time while being a full time chief of the department.

In 2002 I took a job just outside of Louisville, Kentucky at a fire district, was hired there as their first full time fire chief where we did some change management and started hiring some first day crews to cover the day shifts when the volunteers weren't around as much and then I was only there a short period of time and then 2003 I was hired here at Minooka Fire Protection District where I've been serving as a Fire chief ever since.

And while being here as the Fire chief, I've been able to serve on some other boards and committees around the area including EMS Advisory Board and a Consolidated Dispatch center board.

I served for several years on the Illinois Fire Chiefs Volunteer and Combination Officer Committee where I was the chairman for 12 years from the start of that committee.

And then in 2018, I was elected to, to serve on the board of directors for the VCOS board and continue to serve this day back February of last year, was elected by the board to be the vice chair.

So that gives you a little snapshot of where I've been and where I'm at.

Chief Ed Mann: Well, great.

So my wife and I traveled to the western US Last year and I recall passing signs for Minooka. And yes, I know I didn't stop. And I've apologized a couple of times for that.

Chief Al Yancey: You have.

Chief Ed Mann: But the one thing that struck me from Interstate 80 was the massive warehouses I could see. So let's spend a couple of minutes and talk about these huge warehouses that are obviously in your first new area that I could see from Interstate 80.

Chief Al Yancey: Yeah, Minooka has grown a lot since I've been here. And we're at the intersection of I55 and I80. So major interstate intersection, I80 going completely across the country and I55 going from Chicago down through Missouri and, you know, long routes there.

So it's made it a popular location for logistics warehouses. And they. Yeah, they have really popped up basically when you, if you were to drive from Minooka all the way into Chicago, you know, it's, it's city suburbs all the way in and a lot of those are walled by these large logistic warehouses and it just become a popular area.

We, we have a large inland intermodal facility. It's not in our area, but it's next door, basically where a lot of the container products come in on the barges and the shipping into that location.

It goes out by truck and by train.

And so even in our area, there's logistical centers continuing to pop up and these intermodal type facilities. So, yeah, we have a lot of them and more planned to come our way.

Chief Ed Mann: So when you mentioned there's more planned, I'm going to assume that. But one of the things I found sometimes here in Pennsylvania is the fire chief doesn't know that they're being built until the ground's been broken.

So I'm assuming someone's letting you know before the ground's broke that they're going to build another one.

Chief Al Yancey: Yeah, we work with our local municipality. We're a fire protection district, so we're a separate government entity. We have a board of trustees, but we work with the local municipalities on the construction and even the development of the fire code and doing a lot of research through the years as we began to get these warehouses, we would do a lot of research on fire code, looking at the different things that can be added into the code, amended into the code to help address the local needs that we have as a fire organization.

But yeah, we, we meet, you know, a lot of times it's the municipality telling us that certain company is looking to build a warehouse. We get that information and then when the time comes, our fire inspector sits down with the local building department and talks about what this facility would look like.

Chief Ed Mann: Oh, great. Well that's good to hear. So let's talk about your department in the area you're covering. And we spent some time talking about the warehouses, but I'm sure your area being a fire protection district is a little more expansive than that.

So let's talk about the area you do provide fire protection to.

Chief Al Yancey: Yeah, so as you mentioned, when you're taking your westernly trip, you were on i80 and as you drove by one of those warehouses, if you look to the left or the south, you would have seen the fire station sitting there.

So just saying there that you, you're pretty close.

Chief Ed Mann: Keep rubbing it in.

Chief Al Yancey: Yeah, I'm going to for a little while.

Our fire district is around 38 square miles.

We're made up of career part time volunteer recruits and cadets. We also have contracted staff which some people you know across the country may be familiar with. We contract with a third party to provide a little bit of our staffing and that's been through growing and growing.

We've been a pretty rapid growing community and organization. So having a contract with some staffing for paramedic and firefighters allowed us to ease into that.

So some places in the country may not be familiar with that, but we still do have contracted people here and then of course civilian staff where two stations.

We protect everything from residential, commercial, logistics centers of course, that we talked about all the way to heavy industry. We have some heavy industry out in the southwest part of our district that does some manufacturing, heavy manufacturing.

And so we have a wide variety of type of risk hazards that we look at.

We provide of course, fire protection. We are an advanced life support paramedic transport service. We're part of a special rescue team which is part of the mutual aid box alarm system team.

A lot of people know Mabus across the country. It's a mutual aid group and within that there are technical rescue teams. And many of our members are members of technical rescue teams with high angle Trench collapse.

We have water rescue, including ice rescue.

We, we do get our fair share of ice in this area.

We run last year a little more than 2,800 calls for service. And I'm happy to say we're a Class 1 ISO fire department, so I'm happy about that.

Chief Ed Mann: Oh, great. So how many career people do you have on typically and what kind of shifts do they work?

Chief Al Yancey: Chief well, we work with a variety shift because we do have career people, we do have part time and generally we're looking to try to have around 10 to 11 people on duty with time off and vacation times with our career.

And we use part time staffing who are firefighter MTs or some of them also are paramedics. Sometimes there's time off, but our shift rotation is 24 on and 48 off.

Chief Ed Mann: Okay.

All right.

So while I was doing my research for this podcast, I discovered your department's history dates back to the late 1800s.

Actually that's pretty early for the Midwest. In fact, the first fire brigade was formed in the 1890s.

The original fire department was formed after two major fires in the downtown area.

The Minooka Fire district was formally organized in 1966.

So that's a little bit of the history. So what moved the Minooka area to become a combination department?

How and when and I guess why did that happen?

Chief Al Yancey: Yeah, sometime back in the 90s, of course, long before I was here. But back in the 90s, mid to late 90s, with a volunteer firefighters association board, which was the primary board operating the volunteer fire department, started with contracting for some paramedic staffing for the organization.

The community was growing at that point and people saw that it was growing and needed to fill that need of having the medical. Of course, that's majority of the calls that you get.

So back in the day, the leaders of the volunteer firefighters association looked at being able to staff up an ambulance and then that, that just continued to grow.

The demand for more calls obviously required more people to be around daytime staffing, you know, even into the 90s and you know, back into the, you know, how far you could look back for recruitment and retention issues really for departments.

But as communities began to grow and people weren't working at the local hardware store or you know, the local offices and they had to travel out of town to go somewhere, then the volunteer availability wasn't there as much.

So that situation occurring across the country, all across the country, probably even back in the 90s. But back then the department identified that we have to fill this need and we're thinking forward to say, how do we do that?

And again, in our area, it is a regular thing to have this contracted staffing. And so they did that to fulfill the paramedic primarily and eventually that evolved into being paramedic firefighters.

And we worked as the organization has evolved. We had what we call paid on premise firefighters. So you were paid when you were on shift and you had to do a sign up to be on shift and you were here to work.

A lot of times there were 12 hour shifts and you would come in in the evening and work till the following morning when you would go off to work. But looking at how to fill those needs and of course growing demand and the organization later hired a full time administrator, hired a full time fire chief.

And so it's just continued to grow. And our board of trustees and our staff here looking and planning and looking ahead to continue to add those people, just continue to grow and evolve.

We hired our first career firefighters in 07, along with shift lieutenants in 07 and just continue to grow that staffing. Look at hiring a couple people each year as the ability to do so in the demand game.

And then just a couple weeks ago, we implemented our again another step in our organization, implemented shift battalion chiefs that are working on shift now. So just if you look back all the way back into, you know, farther than the 90s, but if you look back, like you mentioned, back into the 1800s of how this organization has evolved and continued all the way from the days of the pull hose cart, which actually we have our original hose cart sitting out in the lobby of our fire station, which is pretty cool.

But the organization has just continued to evolve to meet this growing demand.

We're in Edge City to the the growing pieces of Chicago growing out into the suburbs.

Chief Ed Mann: So it certainly sounds to me as though the fire board, the leadership of the fire department and the local government were very proactive in their approach to getting you to where you are today.

Chief Al Yancey: Yeah, our board of trustees, the staff here that we have, when we sit down and have those conversations about how we have to be proactive and not playing catch up by having those relationships with the local community, you know, municipality, understanding where they're going, knowing what kind of growth is coming our way that we can plan even just this morning, the deputy chief and I had a conversation about when our next ambulance is put into full service because of the growing demand of EMS calls and development in the south part of our district where our Station 2 is and how do we grow that thinking about that now of how we're going to fund that in the later years.

As the demand continues to grow, our calls continue to grow each year, population continues to grow and we want to be ahead of that at a responsible level to be able to meet the demand and not be suddenly saying how do we're overwhelmed, we don't want to be in that position.

Chief Ed Mann: That's great to hear. I mean, during my time as the state fire commissioner, we managed a grant program and every year I could see more and more combination departments popping up, especially in southeastern Pennsylvania.

And that continues to happen in a lot of cases. What I'm finding sometimes though is it's reactive rather than being proactive. So kudos to the previous leadership and the community leaders in your community for being proactive and still planning for the future.

That's great to hear.

So, Chief, what advice would you offer to a community that might be considering a move from an all volunteer force to. To a combination fire service?

Chief Al Yancey: Number one is do your homework.

You have to determine if you can afford to pay people or how that's going to evolve.

There's lots of conversation, whether it be podcasts or seminars or whatever type of program talking about recruitment and retention.

How do we address that? How do we deal with that? We know that our organizations, volunteer organizations, are struggling to fill the need of staffing in communities.

And we have to be thinking about how we're going to address that as leaders. It's a leadership driven thing. The leaders of organization leaders of board of trustees, municipal leaders, whoever that is, have to be thinking about how are we going to address this need Your community residents are paying for and expect some level of service.

And that's important to understand as well, to make sure that your community understands where you're at as an organization, making sure they understand the needs that you have and help the community understand that in order to handle this demand, this is what we need to do.

You know, and as we talked about in our community, it's a growing community, it's developing quite a bit. We're getting more population. There are many communities out in the United States that their communities may not are not growing at that level, but are struggling with volunteers.

And so how do you move into that? And when you move into combination, start paying people, obviously it increases your costs and it's going to increase. That may incur a tax increase, it may incur additional fees.

That's why you need to get the community to understand where you're at with your need. If you're going into to Be a combination department.

And I think you need to market your organization.

If you're struggling to provide services, your citizens need to know that through recruitment efforts, they need to know that in order to, whatever level of service that you're providing, if you're providing BLS service or if you're doing ALS service or however you're filling that, if you're working to, to add more people or you're going to have to start paying people, your community needs to understand why that is and it needs to be proven.

Data. People are going to ask you about the data. Where's the data that supports this? We talk a lot these days. You know Ed, you and I have had conversations and as far as bcos board talking about data, but your community is going to want to know about data.

And how do you, how do you work into that? What are the options like functional consolidation to your neighboring town and just planning Again we talked about planning. So sitting down and doing a planning session with your board and your membership and if you get some community members involved, how do we plan to address these needs, what are our strengths and weaknesses kind of thing and figure out how you're going to get to where you need to be.

If, if it really is at a point when you need to do a combination department or you're evolving into having some part time people to start paying them, there's an expense there.

And what can your organization take on to do that? And then are the citizens understanding why you're doing that for their protection. So I think that kind of would be the advice I would give at this point.

Chief Ed Mann: Well, you know, Chief, we just celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday and he had a dream. And two years ago I ran for township supervisor and I had a dream had I got elected and that was I wanted to convince the board of supervisors that we should create a, have a third party, a contractor come in and develop a plan for the future of the fire service in our community and then use that plan to leverage a safer grant to be able to pay for it going forward, at least the seed money for it.

Well, I didn't get elected as the, as a township supervisor. I did offer to the fire department to work with them and I got no response from the leadership. So I don't, I don't know what the future holds.

Chief Al Yancey: Yeah, I think that's a good point. That one it helps to have, I think it helps to have a facilitator help drive that conversation, especially to a lot of times an organization, my experience an organization has it up there in their brain to think about, well what do we need to do?

What do we need to be thinking? But sometimes it takes what you're mentioning is somebody from the outside and sometimes not always but sometimes it's the people who can help you think a little differently and think critically term we're using in VCOs a lot but help you think more critically and deeper into the thought to really think how do we resolve this issue.

So I think that's a great point. It's not always have you don't always have to have someone from a consultant, but sometimes bringing in someone who can just help you think.

And also if you're able to clear your mind of facilitating and actually thinking about your organization, it helps everybody work to find the solution that they could come up with themselves.

Chief Ed Mann: So over the years the VCOS volunteer combination officer section has been behind many ribbon reports. They've addressed significant issues and I know there's work done on a few other projects and I don't want you to go in depth.

But let's briefly talk about tell our listeners about some of those projects you kind of mentioned just a few seconds ago, the critical thinking. And I know that's the last year and a half, two years with the board's been a big topic.

In fact, when we have our next board meeting, we're going to be introduced to the folks that helped develop that. So let's just briefly talk about some of the ribbon reports that VCOS has been involved with in the past and what the future holds.

Chief Al Yancey: Yeah, there's several reports available on the VCOS website, including Red Ribbon Report that's being worked on now like we talked about earlier about how to transition to a combination apartment or what change was looks like and how do you work your way into that.

So that's one of the reports out there. The report coming out soonest is next will be the Gold Ribbon report. And chief, you've worked on that yourself a little bit with data in the fire service and designed to give information about the nearest program.

And you actually could probably talk more to some of the contents of that as to the gold ribbon report. But that's going to be a great report to help with narus.

That'll be the next report coming out from vcos.

And then we have you're the fire chief now. What that's a great publication to help organizations or people who are moving into the fire chief's job either permanently or even on an interim level to work through the transition into the fire chief job.

There's a lot of reports out there through the years that vcos has worked on that provide valuable information to help with different programs and aspects of the organization.

The Fair Labor Standards act report that's out there.

How do you work? How do volunteers get paid and how does that work with the irs? Just huge library of information that you can get reports off of our website.

Chief Ed Mann: Well to our listeners. We'll have links in the notes of this podcast when it's posted where you could be able to get to the VCOS website. So to be able to get you access to those reports.

So Chief, how does one become a member of the IFC and the VCOs? And why is it important for a fire chief to even belong to those organizations? What value add is there to be a member of it through the vcos?

Chief Al Yancey: In order to join the vcos, the membership structure for IFC is you have to be a member of the IFC International Fire Chiefs and then part of your section membership when you go to renew.

And if you are an IFC member, you probably have seen renewal notices coming out lately.

But you can go in there and select the vcos as section membership and memberships are available through the IFC website. If you're not a member, you can go on there and complete an application.

And if you are a leader of a volunteer combination department, we would encourage you to get involved with the section.

The VCOS board is working hard for the volunteer and combination leader. We focused on helping the leaders be better leaders. We spend a lot of time developing and delivering education and the reports you mentioned earlier working through different initiatives that come our way and just to give tools to the volunteer and combination leader that the critical thinking piece that's coming out here soon and if anyone was at symposium and took part in the sessions that we had for critical thinking, that's really where the BCOS is focusing on right now with critical thinking for leaders.

How do we think critically in our day to day work as fire service leaders and looking at thinking differently and it has a deeper level of thinking.

The board and the people who are working to develop this course are very excited about the fact that we're delivering something to you that that is different. It is teaching the fire service leader how to think more critically in terms of things that they do every day and thinking about what kind of things are in your brain.

How do you get around what you normally think to think differently?

The idea of adaptive challenges versus technical challenges, the importance of figuring out how to think differently. And so we're really excited about that. But the vcos is really focused on helping leaders be better leaders.

I think that that probably would best sum up, you know, what, what it is part of our mission, a mission statement has to do with enhancing effective professional leaders and giving them the tools for the toolbox.

So that's really what drives the board and that's what drives the, the section is that we keep putting those tools in the toolbox that then you can come in and get those off of the website or come to a symposium or request a program beyond hoses and helmets, request transition class to combination or you know, eventually a critical thinking.

Get involved with critical thinking Academy. But there's a lot of courses available too. But, but really just about giving tools to the toolbox for those leaders.

Chief Ed Mann: Well, you know, I've been around the volunteer combination officer section.

Well, let's see. Larry Curl was the chair when I first I actually went on the board for about a year. I filled a vacancy and then of course Tim Wall became the executive, the president of the board.

And then Chuck Flynn, God rest his soul. And now with Rich Cowder. And I can tell you over the years I've seen the VCOs offer a lot of very value added reports and training to leaders.

And I gotta tell you, I'm really excited about what I see the, the, the VCOs bringing to the forefront in the, in the future.

There are a lot of younger board members on the board now and I'm excited about the future of the VCOs and what it has to offer to the fire service and the leadership.

And you're now the vice chair.

Chief Al Yancey: Yeah. Yes.

Chief Ed Mann: Well, that's great to hear.

And I still, as a employee of Providence, get to attend the board meetings and I got to tell you, I'm pretty excited about what I see.

So tip of the hat to you and the leadership on the board.

Chief Al Yancey: Thank you.

Chief Ed Mann: So Chief, as we near the end of the station 1902 podcast, do you have any words of wisdom to pass along to our listeners?

Chief Al Yancey: Well, Chief, I just want to thank you for inviting me to the podcast. It's always. I always enjoy visiting with you whether we're at symposium or just standing at the booth talking, talking about different topics in the fire service.

I always enjoy spending time with you. But on behalf of the VCOS board, I also want to thank Provident for their partnership and support for many years. We appreciate the involvement that Provident has and your commitment too as Provident to the volunteer in combination fire service.

You know, just before the podcast we came onto the podcast, we were Chatting about the stuff that Provident does and right here doing education pieces as well.

I guess just as a closing comment, I would, I would say to leaders out there it's important for volunteer and combination department leaders to get involved with the fire service issues.

There are a lot of issues out there that you may not initially think are going to affect you, but lots of conversation about the revised OSHA standards.

Hopefully everybody's paying attention to that because it's going to have an effect depending on where that goes. But legislation that's out there with affecting the fire service, the grants, the programs, that it does matter when you put a phone call or brief letter into your legislator.

And I think probably most volunteer and combination leaders are paying attention to recruitment and retention, but we really need to be working harder and continue to work on solutions to that.

And how do we think differently? Critical thinking, again, I keep throwing that out, but we got to think critically about how we resolve these issues. We can't keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

And you know, basically on all those levels and try to as, even though you may think you're a small department, a leader of a small department, it's important to be in that room where it happens and try to get involved and understand what's going on, to be able to network with other people.

And I have to make sure I mentioned that we have symposium in the sun every year in November, and that's a great opportunity for leaders to come together to have great educational sessions, but also to build a network that can last for a long time.

I've been going to symposium long before I was on the board and I have contacts now in my network that are across the country that are sharing, having similar issues.

And it provides a great opportunity to network. So I would just encourage, even though you think you may be a small department chief or deputy chief or officer and that you're a small organization, get involved.

And VCOS is one way to do that. And we can give you a lot of information and we can give you a lot of education and tools for that toolbox.

So just get involved.

Chief Ed Mann: Great. And you mentioned a symposium. Obviously, folks, it's in Clearwater, Florida in November, and typically the weather is very nice there in November.

And also if you go to the VCOS website, they'll start advertising if they haven't already. There are scholarships available that you can apply for that would certainly help defray the cost for you to attend the symposium.

And it's, it's a great time, a great opportunity to network. And the weather is usually pretty nice as well. I mean, I leave central Pennsylvania In November, it's 40 degrees.

I go to Florida and it's 75, 80 degrees with lots of sun. So it's, it's, it's a great time and a great place to to go network with people that have a lot of the same issues you might be facing.

So thanks for mentioning the symposium, Chief Chief Yancy, I want to thank you for taking the time through your busy schedule to join us today. I'm hoping your listeners now have a better understanding of example of an example of a solid combination fire department and the VCOs.

I'm looking forward to a live webinar on February 27th at 7pm when we'll discuss you're the Fire Chief Nawa, and it's going to be a roundtable discussion with Chief Yancy from Minooka and Chief Jordan Kramer from South Srbane in southwestern Pennsylvania.

So to sign up for that webinar, view our previously recorded webinars. We'll have a link in the Episode Notes that we'll send out. Share this podcast with your colleagues. You can send them our subscription link, also found in the Show Notes.

We'll also have a link in the Show Notes to the VCOS website.

Lastly, to our listeners, if you have any questions or need additional information, or if you have an idea for a future webinar or podcast, please email us@infoprovidentins.com

Station 1902 signing off. Until next time, stay safe for your family. Safe.

Chief Al Yancey: It.