Monroe County Fire Chief RL Colina joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
The Fire Academy Class of ‘26 had 29 qualified trainees coming out of that program.
Chief Colina said, “This is the first time in Monroe County Fire Rescue that we’ve offered two in one fiscal year. So we graduated 31 the first and now we’ve got 29 in there that have started, and they’re several weeks in and doing exceptional for this training program. It is quite a rigorous program. Throw in there the amount, about 75 pounds worth of gear that they’re wearing on a daily basis, the amount of heat and humidity we have down here in the Florida Keys, that adds an extra element to the training program within itself. But they’re well conditioned. We get them well trained, and we’re looking forward to another large graduating class.”
July 24 will be the conclusion of this class’s program, and then there will be another Academy in October.
Chief Colina said, “They can reach out to our office. We have information on our website. They can follow the links, and they can get a hold of us at any time if they have any questions concerning the academy itself or any of the core paths that we offer for the fire service.”
The Murph event will happen in Big Pine on May 25th.
Chief Colina said, “It’s for the legacy of Lieutenant Michael Murphy, the US SEAL who died in Afghanistan back in 2005. All fitness levels are welcome to come out. It’s a great opportunity to pair up with a friend, a loved one, and even just your neighbors, and get out there and participate in this event. We have firefighters that will be out there participating, going through it. They have different levels of the event that you can participate in, depending on your skill level. Just a great time. Last year was a tremendous success, and we look at hosting that again on My 25, which is a Saturday of this year.”
The Big Pine Academy Field Day will be on May 27.
Chief Colina said, “They’ll be at Big Pine Academy for their field day. It’s a great event. The kids love having the firefighters out there. We spray them down with some water, cool them all down out there in the field, and then we jump right back into it. May 30 is the start of our annual beat the heat events starting at Harry Harris Park. Then we also do Tavannier, Layton on June 6, Big Pine, June 13. Sugarloaf school, June 20, and then we’ll end this up at Stock Island at Bernstein Park on June 27 with our beat the heat events. Our guys are always out there recruiting. Myself, as the chief, I’m always recruiting. The future of this county relies on us recruiting. The fire service for a while there, one of the problems with the recruitment was that we didn’t have the outreach that we have today. A lot of individuals didn’t know what it took to become a firefighter, how to become a firefighter, and there’s so many resources out there. We have so many spots that we can put people in, and even if it’s not directly from the fire service, but a medical related field, we have information to help you on that as well. So not just those that want to become firefighters, but you may want to work in a hospital. You may want to work on a transport vehicle. There’s a lot of different avenues, and we are your resource in Monroe County to provide that information.”
The Board of County Commissioners recently approved 15 additional spots for fire rescue.
Chief Colina said, “So we’re actively now going through the process. So Monroe County Fire Rescue will be putting on an additional 15 personnel, which is just outstanding for the community, outstanding for the members and just fostering and providing a greater level of service. In looking at what we spent in overtime and the amount of hours, you equate the hours of work, a firefighter works for 24 hours, and sometimes, when you don’t have the adequate staffing, that firefighter needs to stay an additional 24 hours. So that’s a 48 hour shift that the personnel are operating under, and that causes all types of issues down the road, for fatigue, your mental acuity is shot. There’s just different things that affect you when you’re working such a prolonged amount of hours. And with this process of getting to the right staffing number, we look at definitely controlling that overtime and also bringing health and safety back into the eyes of the firefighters.”
Drought conditions continue, as do wildfires.
Chief Colina said, “We’re very grateful that the Florida Keys, we’re not being plagued by any of these conditions with the fires. Right now, we are closely monitoring the needs that have been coming out and the requests for additional assistance in some of these areas within Florida. One of the last times that we had such an occurrence, a lot of our firefighters weren’t even firefighters back then. This was back in ‘96, ‘97 when we had a lot of active wildfires in the state of Florida, where we were out there having deployments and requests for other areas Central and North Florida. So we’re kind of starting to see similar conditions right now with the drought conditions we have in the active fires that we have currently. So Monroe County Fire Rescue is definitely monitoring it closely with emergency management. And we do have availability of strike teams available if called upon. Remember, June 1 is the start of our hurricane season, and we can never be asleep on that. Emergency Management does an excellent job. But it’s never too early to prepare. Make sure you have your supplies ready, Evacuation Plan ready, if you have dogs, if you need extra medication, different things of that nature, make sure you have that stuff stored up, saved up, ready to go so you’re not scrounging around at the last minute to try to make these resources happen for yourself. So these hurricanes come upon us pretty quickly, and we just want to make sure that you guys have your plan and we’ve got ample time at this moment. I can’t say once we start hurricane season, how much time we will have. It’s an honor to serve as the fire chief of Monroe County. We work with an amazing administration, great support from our county commissioners, and I will tell you that this is the best residency you can have anywhere in this nation. We work in paradise. We protect paradise, and we’re very honored and proud to be part of this.”
For more information, click here: https://www.monroecounty-fl.gov/firerescue