Jackson Fire Department's Proactive Measures for a Healthy, Cancer-Free Workplace with Nederman Exhaust Removal Systems.

The Jackson Fire Department is located in the village of Jackson, WI and founded in 1892. It is a combination paid on-call department with a full-time fire chief, training captain and 24-hour paramedic coverage. Currently the Jackson Fire Department serves resident of the Town of Polk, Town of Jackson, Village of Jackson and Kirchhayn, spanning approximately 50 square miles. The Jackson Fire Department shares space with the Village Hall and Jackson Police Department in a newly built Jackson Municipal Complex that opened its doors in 2021. A main feature of the municipal complex is the fire department’s apparatus bay with Nederman vehicle exhaust removal systems.

 

A Growing Community Requires a New Station Build

In 2016, Jackson responded to six hundred calls and that has doubled as the community continues to grow each year. Chief Aaron Swaney explained just how much the fire department has changed upon his arrival to the department eight years ago. He referred to the department housing the apparatus in a “shed” where it was too big for the location, and it was “never meant to be a true fire station.” The Jackson Fire Department underwent a five-year planning stage to design their new fire station. An architect was hired to complete a feasibility study and assess the prime location and design to support Jackson’s continued growth.

The Jackson Fire Department now has two engine apparatuses for fire safety maintenance and to respond to structural fires. They also have a one-hundred-and-ten-foot ladder truck and two ambulances that regularly respond to the growing medical emergencies of the village. There’s an air truck to fill SCBA bottles a brush truck to respond to any grass or brush fires, and then several admin vehicles, including a command vehicle.

Creating a Healthy Cancer-Free Environment

Chief Aaron Swaney detailed their primary goal when designing the new fire station, “The main goal we wanted to achieve was creating a healthy, cancer-free area and making sure that when we came in, our exhaust wasn't blowing all over into the apparatus bay and Nederman provided us a solution to that problem.”

Nederman Regional Sales Manager, Tom Nolan explains, “The process is generally initiated by the fire department, whether it be the chief or fire personnel contacting us for a site visit. We make those arrangements to visit the station, build a relationship with them, get to know them, their personnel, how they operate out of that station, what their current needs are and what their future needs might be for apparatus that they may purchase.”

Factors that determine a proposed solution include

- How they enter and exit the building

- Future building expansions or upgrades

- Climate

- Number and type of vehicles maintained in the apparatus bay

- Frequency and number of runs

Nederman offers a variety of different systems that differ for departments based on their activity levels. Busier stations may warrant one type of system and volunteer stations may warrant another type of system.

 

Nederman installed MAX Rail and MAX Track systems across fourteen drops in Jackson Fire’s apparatus bays. The exhaust removal system is automatically activated when the personnel enter the rig. The Nederman auto-start system sends a radio signal to the receiver that's transmitted to the wall panel that starts the fan. When the apparatus returns to the building, a team member attaches the hose to the tailpipe and the system will shut down on its own. Nederman offers various solutions to accommodate different nozzle sizes and types for the most effective source capture of diesel exhaust and evacuated from the building.

“Super Easy to Use”

Nederman installed and demonstrated how to properly use the Magna system to train the Jackson Fire Department from the beginning. Subsequent policies were created and implemented to be followed by all team members.

Captain Jim Huyser explains, “We worked with Nederman to create “a train the trainer” with our daytime staff. We became experts on the system. We wrote an “SOG” standard operating guideline to train all our employees on how to operate it properly.

Super easy to use. Typically, we'll line it up to the back end of the station. If possible, we'll have two firefighters hop off. One is the spotter and gets in the driver's side mirror. The other one will go down the passenger side. We'll start to back into the station as soon as we're in a position where the exhaust hose will reach the truck, we pause. They do the tailpipe magnet connection with the exhaust hose, and then we proceed to back in the rest of the way with the spotters.

Captain Huyser commented on the quick procedure and that the team easily performs it “a hundred times a day.”

 

A Clean, Safe Station

The Jackson Fire Department mentioned the excitement to have this new system and that it’s keeping the team safe and the station clean.

 

Chief Swaney comments, “It keeps our station clean. We have all light walls, light floors, and we would like to keep it that way. In our old station, you know, we started with light walls and light gray floors. When we left there, the floors were actually brown. “It just goes to show you that there is contaminants out there, and we have to do our part to make sure we're all safe. We're in a climate where we have snow and rain and coldness on a regular basis. So, being able to do a truck check you know, in the middle of the winter, it's allowed us to do that, which is important to being ready for a fire or an emergency situation.

“With Nederman's clean air [solution], it's been fantastic. This is the first time we've ever had an exhaust [removal] system installed at the Jackson Fire Department’s hundred- and thirty-year history. “We started talking about the cancer prevention and the cancer rates of firefighters. And now we have that protection, essentially a hundred percent capture of that exhaust,” states Captain Huyser. “I know we're captioning that diesel exhaust. We're keeping those carcinogens out of our building. We're keeping our people safe. That's our number one priority. We all want to retire healthy and happy, and it's what it's all about,” continued Captain Huyser.