Gator Exchange Club

The Gator Exchange Club held its January 16^th meeting at Gainesville Fire Rescue and was treated to an excellent presentation on emergency services.  The meeting was led by Captain Michael Heeder, a 23-year fire service veteran who is one of the training officers for the Department and has extensive public speaking and emergency management experience.

Captain Heeder welcomed everyone in attendance following a welcome and introduction by Assistant Fire Chief Michael Randolph.  Captain Heeder played a video of the Fire Rescue Department including incident scenes of vehicle crashes where firefighters used tools including the Jaws of Life to rescue trapped occupants and a scene in northeast Gainesville where an unconscious man was pulled from his burning house by Gainesville firefighters.

Following lunch and the video, Captain Heeder (a self-proclaimed fire history buff) began with a history of Gainesville Fire Rescue, which has been saving lives and property in Gainesville since 1882.  Captain Heeder’s presentation included the first organized volunteer corps following two devastating fires in 1884 & 1886 and the first horse used to pull the Department’s original steam engine.  “John” was named after Chief John MacArthur, the first Gainesville Fire Chief.  Two other horses soon joined the Department at the turn of the 20^th Century, and were also named for the Chief:  “Mac” and “Arthur”.  Discussion followed about GFR’s first motorized fire engine, purchased in 1914.

In 1925 Gainesville Fire Rescue became a fully paid Department and in the mid-1980’s GFR began running medical calls with paramedics to provide Advanced Life Support medical care. Captain Heeder took time to answer a number of questions from those attending on topics ranging from Emergency Medical Services and paramedics responding to homes to the proper ways to install and check smoke detectors in the home.

The Gainesville Fire Rescue Department, led by Fire Chief William Northcutt, has 160 firefighters and 15 emergency vehicles that respond to more than 19,500 emergency calls a year. Those emergency calls include home and business fires, brush fires, auto accidents, emergency medical services, hazardous materials incidents, aircraft rescues and natural disasters.

The operations division is led by Deputy Chief Gene Prince. Seven fire stations house the personnel and equipment, which are responsible for emergency management in a 135-square-mile area with a population of 145,000 (which includes the city and adjacent areas of Alachua County). GFR educates its firefighters through constant training in Gainesville and around the country.  The Department also produces an in-house television show, FireCenter, which airs every Friday at 1:30 p.m. on our local government Channel 12.  This show helps train personnel while in station and allows for rapid response to emergencies without leaving their assigned territory for selected training venues.

Planning more effective ways of dealing with emergency situations is also a vital part of GFR's mission. The hazardous materials team, managed by Special Operations Chief Donnie Sessions, works with facilities that deal with dangerous fuels and chemicals to ensure a quick and correct response should a hazardous materials incident occurs. Firefighters learn to work with new equipment that makes unique emergencies such as confined-space-rescues and water rescues safer and quicker.

But GFR's dedication to protecting the community doesn't stop at emergency operations. The department's Risk Reduction Bureau pursues an aggressive fire prevention program that involves education, planning and enforcement under the direction of Deputy Chief Timothy Hayes.

GFR enforces the fire codes that protect homes and businesses. A regular fire inspection program accomplishes this task. The department's fire inspectors work to ensure that buildings in our community are fire safe. The department educates community citizens through fire and life safety classes directed toward children, families and businesses. GFR designs educational programs such as Project Get Alarmed, which has firefighters going out to homes and installing smoke detectors at no change.   Firefighters and Fire Safety Clowns help to deliver these and other vital programs to the community.

Following the presentation, everyone attending was invited over to tour Fire Station 3 on NE Waldo Road.  Guests were given a tour of the station and a rundown on response and procedures.  Gainesville Fire Rescue is fully funded by the city to provide you the best possible service. GFR does not assess a fee for services provided. So if you have a concern, suggestion or problem call your Fire Rescue Department at (352) 334-5078; and if it's an emergency, dial 911.

At the June 20^th lunch meeting of the Gator Exchange Club (www.gatorexchange.org), we had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ed Prevatt, a senior manager with the National Center for Construction Education and Research (www.nccer.org).  Ed has been an educator for 18 years at The Loften High School and specializes in teaching at-risk kids that are often only a small step away from dropping out.  Ed has also worked in the construction industry for 30 years, which provided us a unique perspective on how education affects today’s youth and their ability to transform their technical training into successful careers.  When most Americans measure the success of our students on their ability to graduate high school and enter the University system, Ed measures success in an individual’s ability to obtain skill levels that, more often than not, do not require a college degree.

He started by pointing out that most kids want to be successful.  High school students don’t drop out because of their lack of desire to be successful; they often drop out because they haven’t been given the chance to match their interests and the personal understanding of what they wish to do, with what they are being told they must do to succeed by very rigid guidelines.  After all, how many students really find Shakespeare interesting?  If the school system would spend more time getting students to read things they are interested in, instead of the things that seem like a chore, then maybe more would take an interest in reading and learning.  After all, isn’t the goal to be able to read, not just to read Shakespeare?

Ed, having spent much of his life in construction, pointed out that it is an incredible “time to acquire wealth in the construction industry” and that there are not nearly enough craft workers available to support the needs of the industry.  He posed the following question to the Gator Exchange club members and their guests: If in 1950 20% of the jobs needed college degrees, how many jobs need college degrees in today’s market?  Several club members suggested answers ranging from 40% to 75%.  The club was stunned to learn that today only 20% of the jobs available in America still require college degrees. The number of jobs requiring college level education has not changed in over 50 years.  Only our perception of the idea of needing a college education leading to successful job opportunities has changed.

Today 15% of the available jobs require unskilled laborers and 60% of jobs require learned skills that often have a licensing requirement beginning with classroom training not conducted in a college environment.  Only twenty years ago 60% of the jobs available required unskilled labor, making this one of the most significant employment changes of the twenty first century.  We need to educate the men and women teaching today’s youth that students do not necessarily need a college degree, but they almost always need to learn a skill.  Those learned skills often lead to very successful and rewarding lifetime careers.

It may be more important to have our high school students do a book report on the history of construction instead of the fictional works of Shakespeare. Isn’t it more important to teach our youths to learn skills using relationships that will show them how what they are being taught today will benefit them in the future?  With 60% of the industry jobs available in the US requiring a specific technical expertise, instead of a college degree, then we should be more concerned with teaching someone how to think and react on the job to support the ever changing needs of our country and the people that make it “the best country in the world.”  Our educators need to get away from focusing their teaching efforts on the interests of school boards and politicians.  Instead let’s get them to focus on the needs of the student and their interests and how education can help them succeed in a job market that does not usually require the focus of college graduate level individuals.

Ed ended his presentation to the Gator Exchange Club by sharing his experience with a young man that he had in his class 10 years ago.  This student, Ernest Jackson, was a typical at-risk 10^th grader that was being transferred to his class at the Loften High School from East Side High School.  Earnest was a typical angry, moody, and unsatisfied young man whom was no longer paying attention in any of his classes.  He didn’t understand the need for the education he was being forced to endure. 

As often is the case, it is usually easier for most of our educators to get rid of the troubled kids so they can focus on those who are interested in the traditional approach of our public education system.  What Ed quickly learned about Earnest is that, although he was angry at traditional education and his forced adherence to traditional education that he believed wasn’t doing him any good, Earnest was truly a very articulate, intelligent, and often fun-loving young man. 

After Earnest’s first term at Loften, he participated in a summer work program in the construction industry with Ed.  That summer changed young Earnest’s entire attitude about learning in the classroom.  Earnest was able to understand, through Ed’s mentorship, how the education he was getting in the classroom translated into helpful job skills in the workforce. 

Ed has subsequently kept in touch with Earnest over the years and has watched young Earnest grow into a successful contractor who now lives in Hawaii.  Earnest sent Ed an email with pictures of his recent vacation to Thailand.  Earnest had remembered a video that Ed played in his classroom about Elephants in Africa being used to harvest teak logs.  Ed had used this video to evoke in his students an understanding of the amount of skill and labor that goes into the manufacture of products that eventually make it into our homes.  The pictures Earnest sent were of him standing next to two of those teak logs being harvested. 

Earnest Jackson, a troubled high school student who was sent to a drop out intervention program, had become so successful that he could afford vacations in other countries. He was also moved by the education he received to show his mentor and high school teacher that success is not always achieved through what most Americans have come to know as a traditional college education, but through hard work and the learning of job skills that made him the man he has become today.