Baltimore County, MD Hello Baltimore County, 1 Nov 2017

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From YouTube: Meet the New Fire Chief: November 2017

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Fire Chief Kyrle Preis discusses his priorities and initiatives.

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Welcome to hello! baltimore county., I'm your host, ellen kobler.

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Baltimore county has a new fire chief with a lot of positive ideas and initiatives.

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We're very pleased to welcome to the hello! baltimore county studios.

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Fire chief kyrle preis.. Thank you so much for joining us.

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Thank you for having me.

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First of all,, why don't you share with us a little bit about your background?.

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Okay. I came to--. I have a little over 27 years on the job in the fire department.

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I came to work in 1990 for baltimore county as an emt.

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And rose through the ranks., this is the ninth position, or rank, that I've had in the department,.

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And it's been a fun ride.

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All right. and you started out on the volunteer side?.

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I did. I started out at 16 years old as a volunteer at the kingsville volunteer fire company.

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I still live in the area., I was born and raised there, and that gave me, you know,.

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The training and the education- and I guess, the initiative,, if you will,,.

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To make this a career.

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And you kind of got the bug, right? ( laughter ), I did. I did. yeah. yeah. so,. Let's talk a little bit about the modern day, fire service.

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You fight fires, but I think more people see you.

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Responding to medical emergencies. is that right?.

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Yeah,, that's true., we're what we like to call an all-hazards, business.

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so, and the majority of what we do today, and it really hasn't. Changed.

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It's been this way for years., but the majority of what we do are calls for emergency medical services.

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In 2016, we ran approximately 135,000 calls for service,.

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And over 100,000 of those were for ems-related incidents.

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The number of fires, working fires especially, has decreased over the years, due to a number of reasons: building. Construction, fire codes, sprinklers, smoke, detectors,.

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Public education, and awareness.

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yet, the, you know, ems, continues to increase—.

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The population increases, healthcare in general.

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Many people do not have primary care providers.

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They use 911 as kind of their primary care provider in some instances,.

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And go to the emergency rooms for, you know, different things,.

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And that's what we're here to do, to help out.

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Okay. so,, you mentioned that the fire suppression calls.

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Are decreasing, and is that true, kind of, just locally or nationally?.

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Because you know,, I got to say, on the news,, you still see a lot of house fires, and it's very frightening.

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You do. you do., but it is a national trend that those fires do decrease,.

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But when they happen,, they are, you know, sometimes--,.

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What we see on the news,, it's something catastrophic or there's a loss of life associated with that,, but in general,, and it is nationally, that the number of fires,.

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You know, have decreased. the number of fire-related deaths decrease..

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It's almost at a zero. The number of fire deaths.

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Associated with a sprinklered occupancy.

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so,, it's very important really? that several years ago,, we put additional legislation in place.

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To sprinkler, you know, single-family homes in baltimore, county,.

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And that's going to make a difference.

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it's going to save lives.

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The new construction. mm-hmm. all right. talk a little bit about your staff.

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training is very important,. Especially,, you mentioned, the all-hazards response.

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You respond to accidents on the beltway and on the roads.

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You respond to medical emergencies, like you, said.

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If there's a hazmat,, if there's a hazardous release,, you respond to that.

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How do you make sure that your staff is trained to know what to do.

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In an instant, given whatever faces them?.

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Well, good questions., it's difficult.! It's a lot of training. That's involved to keep, you know, up to speed.

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And be ready to handle whatever, you know, incident comes in.

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We do have specifically designated units and personnel.

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For hazardous materials or advanced tactical rescue.

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Or more technical-type rescues.

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Like a trench, rescue? exactly.

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You know,, we have a team, that's deployed out of a particular station for that,.

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For hazardous materials., we have, you know, one station, that's there--.

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They receive additional training,. You know, in that discipline.

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And every one of our employees has an awareness to handle.

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Any kind of incident that comes in,, but then we bring in our technical experts,.

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But it's a lot of training. and there's technical stations where they need more training.

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That doesn't take them away from their everyday jobs..

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You know,. They still have to respond on calls. they're, not one-dimensional..

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They don't just sit around waiting for their particular...

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no, and they just aren't trained--. They do a lot of training,.

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But they still respond on the calls within their catchment area or their district,, and there are still other things that they need to do.

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They perform fire inspections., they do maintenance on hydrants.

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and then the daily activities of station life they still have to perform.

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So,, what do you do to support both the medics and the firefighters,.

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In terms of the physical and emotional demands of the job?.

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I'm glad you mentioned that.. This is a very--. It's a very physical job,.

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And you know, emotionally,, it can take its toll.

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You know,, our men and women, see things that most people don't see,.

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So it's of primary concern to me our physical wellbeing.

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And our mental wellbeing. so,, we do look out for our personnel as far as physically.

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Both career and volunteer fire and ems personnel are required.

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To have yearly physicals to make sure that they're, physically capable.

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Of doing the job, and it's important that all of us coworkers.

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Look out for each other to make sure that we're able to handle things emotionally.

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at the top of my priorities as chief of this department.

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Is truly the safety, health, and wellness of all of our members,.

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And that means on the fire, ground or an ems scene.

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Or a rescue and off duty, as well.

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It's a lot of stressors that--. We have a lot of stressors here,.

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A lot things that affect us, and we have to make sure that when we get off duty and we're spending time with our friends and families, that,, you know, we're able to cope,.

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And we have the support that we need for that..

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And yet,, it is a job that a lot of people are interested in..

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Are you in a recruitment mode?? Are you looking for new firefighters and medics?.

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We are., I like to say we're always recruiting, and we are.

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Currently, we're processing an ems class of both emts.

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And paramedics, at the same time as for firefighters.

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And it's an exciting time. and I'm looking to continue our mission.

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To increase the diversity within our department,.

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When it comes to a ratio of male to female members of our department,.

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Which we are national leaders in the numbers of women that we have in our department.

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I know county executive kamenetz has spoken on this, show about that as a priority,, both females, minority...

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Absolutely. individuals in the community. yeah., it's the county, executive's priority, and I'm committed to that, as well.

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So, you know,. We aggressively, recruit and target people that can do this. Job.

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But it's a physically demanding job, and it can be more difficult for some people,.

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And it's a difficult job physically for women., I might have trouble dragging you out of a burning building, right?

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yeah,, but we can work with you on that.

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Okay. very good. ( laughing ).

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You mentioned briefly education and outreach to the public.

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What do you do to let people know how to protect their families.

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From fire, and what sorts of messages do you communicate,.

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And how do you get the word out?.

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Well, in today's day and age,, we use social media..

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We use our facebook account and instagram to push messages. Out.

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That's a great mechanism to use,.

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But we also target community groups, and we go out.

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So, a station will have community groups that they'll go out.

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And meet with, and we try to stay engaged.

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if there are fairs and events that are going on,.

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We go out and try to get the message out about fire safety, education and ems education..

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And we are working on a program to educate everyone a little bit more.

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On the ems and what we do, and maybe some other avenues.

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For some people to use versus calling 911.

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For example, contacting the baltimore county health department, if they need some longer-term assistance.

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And again,, going back to if people-- you know,, how important it is to have a primary care physician versus, you know,, calling 911,.

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You know, every time we have some sort of injury or something happens,.

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Or if, you know,, we get to the point where we get knocked down.

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Because we have flu,, but if we would have gotten our flu shot a few months before,.

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Maybe this wouldn't have even happened.

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Right. sure. or some of those chronic conditions, where, if they're properly maintained,, they hopefully don't turn into a medical emergency.

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All right. well,, congratulations on your promotion.

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And thank you very much for taking some time to be with us. Today.

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Thanks for having me. sure.

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And thank you for watching hello! baltimore county., as you can see, we're all in good hands under the leadership of chief preis and his excellent team.

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thanks for watching,, and we encourage you to connect with baltimore county government on our website and on all of our social media. Platforms.

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