Over the last few months, fire department officials from the Palatine Rural Fire Protection District, the Village of Palatine and the City of Rolling Meadows have identified opportunities to further enhance existing Intergovernmental Agreements. Chief Officers from all three jurisdictions have agreed to seek further opportunities to improve the level of service provided to the community, ensure firefighter safety, and improve overall efficiency. In April of 2012, the Palatine Rural Fire Protection District and City of Rolling Meadows entered into an agreement to share training officer and incident commander positions between the two jurisdictions. Since that reorganization, the two jurisdictions have met with Village of Palatine fire officials on a regular basis to explore opportunities to further consolidate administrative and operational duties within the three entities.
The departments will utilize a combined training schedule for 2013 and effectively train as one department. Department members will train together and provide coverage while training evolutions are being completed by their cohorts, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries, with the intent of enhancing firefighter safety and improving organizational efficiency by utilizing a larger economy of scale. While multiple department training evolutions have been held regularly for decades, firefighters from the three jurisdictions will engage in more frequent joint training evolutions in 2013 with the objective of increasing operational consistency across the three departments. The training will cover firefighting, hazardous materials, special rescue and emergency medical response practices.
City of Rolling Meadows, Village of Palatine, and Palatine Rural firefighters working together at a fire almost one year ago on January 21, 2012 at a car wash at Kirchoff Road and Hicks Road in Rolling Meadows.
The three jurisdictions have partnered to pursue additional goals in 2013 and will be working to standardize emergency response guidelines and revise incident command coverage areas.
The Fire Chiefs from all three jurisdictions are grateful for the efforts of all the firefighters, administrative staff and elected officials from their respective jurisdictions to embrace these efforts to continually examine our operations and seek opportunities to keep our firefighters and citizens safe while improving our overall efficiency and performance.
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