Most of our car fires are caused by mechanical failures, overheated parts or the home repair gone wrong.

Below are two pictures I took. The first one is right before Engine 11 arrived and the second picture is as the fire was being extinguished. One person was transported to the hospital as a result of the crash, not the fire.

Todd has always been someone I have looked up to for his no nonsense approach to firefighting and leadership. “Carrots and Sticks and I’m outta Carrots”, is a phrase I will forever remember, that Todd coined. I never worried about Todd or his crews, due to his impeccable judgment and the fact that he always knew, without fail, where his firefighters were on the fireground and exactly what they were doing. I know Todd has shaped the careers of countless firefighters during his career here, including mine.

Congratulations, Todd, for an EPFD career exceptionally done! Todd, of course continues to serve as a full-time firefighter in the City of Edina, so I’ll see him when the EPFD gets called over there or vice versa.

“The man (Fire Inspector, Chuck Schaitberger) from the Fire Department called and said they were coming….they did…at 8 pm the Fire Truck pulled up and about six firefighters came in to survey the situation. They decided, as long as they were there they would change the batteries….decided only one alarm was active and proceeded to bring in a ladder, pad it up and send one of their finest up to make the change. It was perfect. Thank you again for the help….and I really am impressed by how quickly all that was done…you did what you said you would do…like right now!”

This is a great example of one of the many little things that both Fire and Police do every day for our residents and visitors. This is not the red lights and sirens stuff, but it is a big part of the quality of life that Eden Prairie residents appreciate.

Pastor Dan now runs a non-profit organization called Public Safety Ministries, providing many different types of services to the First Responders of Minnesota. Dan does a great job of relating to the various first responder groups throughout the state, and yesterday afternoon was just one more example of that mission in action.

Thank you to everyone that came out yesterday afternoon to remember and support!

In Eden Prairie we are lucky to be able to recruit from a city of nearly 60,000 residents. Even with that large pool of folks to draw from, Eden Prairie Fire struggles every year to find enough qualified candidates to keep at our minimum staffing levels. Imagine the issue in smaller communities!

The article says it all, much better than I ever could. The big mystery is how to solve this looming reality.

The Relay for Life is a great fundraising event to raise money for cancer research. Everybody knows how common pervasive and deadly cancer is in our society. Hats off to EPFD Firefighters who have taken up the cause to raise funds for research and help to Extinguish Cancer!

Eden Prairie Fire Department crews were already out on a few other storm related calls and so were able to get onto the scene quickly. Nobody got injured and the home sustained moderate damage. Lightening fires are unique in that they are not all that common but damage caused by lightening fires in structures is almost twice the amount of other types of fires or $138,000 per structure. Lightening is not a huge contributor to this country’s fire problem, but as today showed, it does happen on occasion.

A good time was had by all!

Good luck, Gene, and be sure to save me some “Blue” for when I come to visit!

All the entries were excellent and the scoring was difficult, in fact many of the entries had to be sampled more than once to be certain the correct ranking was used. After about 2,000 calories the decisions were announced to the assembled crowd of bakers and members of the senior community.

Despite the rigors of this event, I am looking forward to this tough assignment again next year! In the meantime, it’s off to do some exercising to shed a few of the calories I picked up today. Thank you to Officer Elizabeth Stroner for setting this up and all her fine work with our seniors!