Lakeland Currents: Fire Protection in Greater Minnesota

Season 10, Episode 19

When you think about your local property taxes, what are the priorities you think they should fund? Police officers? Road repairs? Perhaps park improvements? In this episode of Currents, we are going to focus on a core service that you quite possibly may never need, yet always expect to be readily available: fire protection.

The Minnesota State Fire Marshal reports that there were more than 14,000 fire incidents reported throughout the state in 2015. Of those, 4,675 were residential structure fires causing more than $130 million in total dollar loss. On average, a fire is reported once every 37 minutes in Minnesota, according to the Fire Marshal. More specifically, a structure fire is reported once every 86 minutes.

But statistics only tell part of the story, so we welcome to the program two fire chiefs. David Hoefer is the chief of the Bemidji Fire Department and Seth Tramm is the chief of the Solway Fire Department. Together, they will inform us of the services provided by their respective departments and discuss the considerations that go into fire department planning.