 Hi, and welcome to What's Up, Williston. We are back after our pandemic hiatus. I'm your host, Eric Wells, town manager, and Williston. We have a great show lined up to kick off our third season and our return. Each month on this program, we'll take a look at what's going on in town and hear from the many members that shape our community. So first off this month, at town meeting 2022, the community supported a fiscal year 2023 budget that included the addition of nine new full-time firefighter and EMT positions to help meet the operational needs for emergency service delivery in town. This need was identified by the town after it completed a comprehensive analysis of the department services in 2011 by the consulting firm AP Triton. The town had over 50 applications for these new positions that were filled in April and the nine recruits recently wrapped up an intensive eight-week training academy. I sat down with our fire captain, Prescott Nadu, who led our training effort to discuss the recruit academy and what it involved. Here's an inside look. So I want to welcome back Captain Prescott Nadu to the show. Welcome back, Prescott. Thanks for having me. So the Wilson Fire Department just completed a recruit academy for nine new firefighters EMTs that wrapped up just last week and Captain Nadu led the efforts in the training at the recruit academy. So he's come by to chat about it a little bit today and I thought we could just start out by just sharing with folks, so what is a recruit academy and why was it important for operations or for our new personnel? Sure. Probably one of the most exciting things I've done in my career. A recruit academy, especially one of such large numbers with nine people going through it is meant to be foundational skills. So we want people, we want to bring people even if they have past experience in other departments or agencies, we want to bring people down to that very most basic level of what is a fire hose and how do you use it? Taking blood pressures on patients and pulses and things like that. We realized early on in hiring, not this nine, but groups before this even that in order to hire the right people we cannot base it simply on certification. Although getting folks with high levels of certification such as advanced EMT or paramedic is great. We want the right people and oftentimes those are folks as we found in this academy, energetic, geared up, young old, it doesn't matter. We just want them to start off on a level playing field which at the end of the day is exactly what the recruit academy does. So it really sounds a lot about we have people coming from different experiences different certification levels but we're always talking about building a team and letting people know what we do in Williston. Oh, absolutely. And I think you nailed it with that statement building a team because the recruits came in on day one expecting eight weeks later to have all of the skills necessary to fight fires, cut cars apart and vehicle electrifications and serve the public in an EMS capacity. But what they didn't realize is throughout every single one of those weeks that built on each other teamwork was really one of the core concepts that we wanted to ingrain in them. And that was 100% evident at the week eight. So if maybe you could share what are some team building exercises the group did? Some things that come to mind. Sure. I mean, early on we were not yet out into the field and so we did the whole two truth and a lie game where everyone around needs to come up with two truth and then one lie based on them personally. So with that allowed us to do is in a relatively amusing manner. We were able to uncover a lot of neat things about each other, incumbent staff participated as well as the recruits. And then that very same in that very same vein we also were able to do an activity related to spaghetti, some string and some tape and you needed to create the tallest structure in a time allotment. And they were split into two groups. They needed to accomplish that utilizing again we didn't tell them any of this but teamwork being a core skill in that is to come together and not try to assert a level of power leadership so much as let's come together toss some ideas around, see what works best. And at the end of that time, the team that had the tall structure simply one praise but it was pretty neat to be able to see how the dynamics worked. I can certainly see where, getting to know each other from a team building standpoint when we're delivering emergency services in town that communication factor is huge. Maybe we just talk about what we're doing on the fire ground or responding to EMS call how that knowing your team and the communication plays into all that. Absolutely, we had a whole day eight hours focused on communication but the irony of that communications day was that was mostly focused on logistics and radio traffic and things of that nature when in reality, every single day that they came in there was additional features of communications the lecture that came forth. So being able to know each other, know each other skill level what we are and are not capable of and being able to own up to that if there's things that I am not good at that others are I will learn from them and sort of yield to them so their strengths come out and they can improve my weaknesses. And we as a group, the recruits especially really came together to discover that in each other and by week eight, it was very evident that they were helping each other out something exceptionally important that occurred is instead of identifying a weakness and then exploiting it to make themselves look better they identified weaknesses in each other and helped each other out. They were able to in many cases overcome phobias or fears or at least lessen them to a point where when they broke into smaller groups, groups of three they were able to work very, very well together. That's great. As I think about this, I know you put in many, many hours to plan this ahead of time. We're talking eight weeks of really day by day hour by hour, well focused with all the different aspects of training to build the team but then the technical pieces as well learning our departments, how did you approach that and what we're going into and what were the goals to cover? So it was a challenge. I will say when I said it was one of the most amazing things that I've done in my career it also was one of the most challenging simply because for the Willisburg Fire Department nothing like this has ever occurred. Nine people in a recruit academy at the same time the highest number of recruits we've had in any academy was three and so the initial approach was to find basically not reinvent the wheel we wanted to find curriculum that already existed. So in utilizing a very similar curriculum that the Vermont State Firefighter One program uses we followed that same exact curriculum. So the PowerPoints were already built out the lectures were already built out we as the incumbent staff and myself as the lead simply needed to get that out to the instructors ahead of time so they could practice and prepare for their respective lecture days. The reason we did that was simply because it's not reinventing the wheel and it's tried and true. We know from hundreds of firefighters throughout the state that they've gone through the curriculum that same curriculum and come out at the end very knowledgeable able to perform the job well. The one additional thing we did which I'm extremely happy that we had a chance to do is we worked in very close concert with our friends at the Burlington Fire Department near months before we started our Academy of Nine they had just completed an Academy of I've actually believed nine and so figuring out what worked for them what didn't work for them we were able to make some game day decision or I shouldn't even say game day was long before the recruit Academy started to make our program that much more robust. I know they were great partners throughout this and it's great to have a peer agency that we rely on for mutual aid as well to be engaged and it was great to see them at the graduation ceremony as well. That was fun and Eric I can say publicly because it's very amusing that it started they almost at the same timeline they had a recruit Academy going not quite nine this recruit Academy was five but they were both called Recruit School 2201 respectively Burlington and Williston and so a little rivalry I'll call it when in reality it was more fun than anything else. Sure. We sent each other little jokes back and forth and we're able to host them as they were able to host us for a number of evolutions culminating with our final week we went to the Vermont Fire Academy for live fire training together and there was no better way to build a group up and have that cohesion across town lines than fighting fire together actually in a training atmosphere. That's what I want to get into a little bit next I know folks watching are probably thinking okay I can picture building a team doing some classroom learning but then there's such a wide spectrum of hands on and fire EMS services and if you want to go through some of these training exercises that were covered and maybe the live fire is a good place to start. Sure, sure and it's neat because that was the culminating activity and so what that did was that encompass it was week eight and it encompassed almost every single discipline that we had taught them up to that point as it relates specifically to firefighting, ground ladder work, work with hose lines and water supply, civilian victim rescue in a smoking environment, search and rescue things like that all were able to be done in a controlled atmosphere to prepare the recruits in some cases some of them hadn't done any activities like that in years. Others have been doing the job for a long time but this was able like I said earlier to get everyone on that same playing field but do so in that culminating manner. When you throw a ground ladder or perform a search and rescue operation in our fire station it's quite a bit different than when you are down at the fire academy and there is actually something on fire in a room a real smoke condition, visibility issues and you're having to then engage in those same training functions. And I believe you went through was it 13 different scenarios? So I might have the term wrong but that was quite a few as I understand it. Yes, yeah, our recruits in conjunction with Burlington's were, it was unbelievable what ended up occurring was 13, as you said 13 scenarios, evolutions which was three shy of an academy record for the largest number of scenarios ever spun up for a group of recruits in this case. And that's just a testament to their hard work. They, I at the time was working in close concert with the academy staff to make sure we didn't overdo it but they were ready and they wanted more. They, yes, at the very end of the day I'm sure they were exhausted. I was fascinated. However, just seeing them even at the end of the day after all the work was done and everything was cleaned up, they were happy. They were smiling, they were excited to have just completed that. So when you're going into an evolution like that scenario that they don't know what they're going into right there it's just like responding to a call. Yes, and that's exactly we had it dispatched out on our radio frequency. We were able to then assign crews to certain roles fire suppression, victim search and rescue, ventilation, functions of that nature. However, what was really neat to see is as occurs in real life on a fire ground or emergency scene of any nature things were very dynamic. I had a piece of paper in front of me that had the scenarios from A to Z listed exactly what was going to occur. And I don't think any single scenario went exactly as it would planned on the piece of paper. But not only did we, the incumbent staff overcome that very quickly but the most impressive thing was the recruits. Working with Burlington, both their recruits and ours were able to really handle any of those changes very well. So that was the culminating factor. I mean, there's a couple of other training exercises you might want to share that the group went through. Yes, yeah, so one of the pictures that we'll share here in just a second is we'll start with early on in the recruit academy we had some fire behavior lectures. So this picture here is of the fire chief performing a live fire exercise with a doll house. It's called the Palmer doll house. And in essence, what this is is we set a small fire in a OSB doll house to teach them show them what ventilation does to a structure how fire travels through a building things of that nature. And that was a really neat opportunity for them to gain some knowledge in a very controlled atmosphere. Sort of similar than taking that to a next level. The next photo here is what we were able to do. We have a prop outside of our fire station that allows firefighters to practice cutting holes in groups for ventilation to get the smoke and hot gases, products of combustion out of a building so firefighters can see and also victims hopefully will be able to breathe better basically to get us in there and rescue them. So we were able to practice utilizing all of our own equipment, ladders, saws, everything like that. Some of the really neat one-off classes we basically did a week of engine company operations. So dressing fire hydrants for getting water from a fire hydrant utilizing the different size fire hoses in different capacities. We did another week that involved rapid intervention training. So I'll show you a picture here in just a moment. This picture is actually a firefighter rescuing another firefighter out of a window. And that can be, it is very physically intense. That also happened to be one of those odd weeks it was extremely hot. So the recruits did an amazing job overcoming a combination of the heat and the physical stress of rescuing another firefighter practicing techniques. In this case, the photo I'm going to show you it's lowering another firefighter after having them brought out of a window. And then one of the last photos I'll show you here this one is of vehicle extrication. So we then migrated more towards instead of a full week devoted towards like I said, engine company operations or firefighter rescue rapid intervention training. We then had sort of one or two days. In this case, this picture is one of three vehicles that we were able to cut apart to train firefighters how to rescue people if they become trapped in a vehicle on the roadway. Again, able to utilize our friends at the Burlington Fire Department. We hosted the class Burlington brought an instructor and extremely knowledgeable and was able to help our recruits in that regard. And then something, you know, I don't have a photo but I do want to talk very briefly as morbid as it is to go down this road the events that have occurred in Buffalo and Valley, Texas really affected the entire nation. And we were in the midst of this recruit school when a lot of that was occurring. One of the classes that was already on the docket to occur but just took a much different meaning was something called a TECC or tactical emergency casualty care. That was a two day class hosted with our colleagues over at the Global Foundry facilities in which we brought in some law enforcement members and we were able to train for scenarios of that nature that involve EMS entering what's called a hot zone or an area where there might be extreme danger involving potentially in active shooter type situation and administer emergency medical care in a rapid fashion. So as more of that is what it's encouraging to know that our recruits even at their very most foundational skills have received critical training of that nature. Yes, just reflecting again on everything they've gone through the training and I have the privilege of watching part of this training too. It's just a testament to the people we have here in our departments and including our new recruits here. As you mentioned, we had a number of our staff sharing their skills and knowledge as teachers in this academy. So just a great experience for our departments and I think we're just about out of time but any last things I didn't ask you to share quickly. The last thing I wanna cover is one of the most critical simply because it's impressive to me as always and that's just the physical fitness component and the members right from day one PT almost every single day for at least half hour, 45 minutes. It's a component of our job that often goes under recognized simply because oh firefighters, they must be fit, right? Well these recruits are very fit after their eight weeks of continuous PT but one of the most exciting things we were able to do is work with our friends at the rehab gym to do a fitness assessment at the beginning and the end of the recruit school to show just how much progress having a physical fitness regimen actually what progress that does. And so in this case, marked improvement was noted injury reduction and hopefully at the end of the day these recruits are able to keep that trend of physical fitness which I do very much believe they will. They will be that much better able to serve the public. That's great. Another great community partner to work with here. But we're out of time for today but Prescott, thanks for coming back on the program now that we're back here and thanks for all you do and for a great recruit Academy that just wrapped up. Thank you sir, it was our pleasure. After graduation on June 10th the nine new firefighters EMTs joined 24 hour department shifts earlier this week. Their addition increases the shift size from four to seven to provide fire and EMS services to our community. Next this month, summer is upon us and the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library is gearing up for its annual summer reading program. I sat down with Youth Services Librarian Bonnie Lord to learn more. So I'm back with Bonnie Lord, our Youth Services Librarian at the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library. Thanks for coming on the show Bonnie. Thank you for inviting me Eric. So we know schools are wrapping up people are gearing up for summer and a big offering we had every other library is our summer reading program. So I thought we would chat about that and one of the things people always ask about is the theme. So sorry, what's the theme for this year? Yeah, so this year and luckily we're able to participate through the Vermont Department of Libraries. Our theme is the oceans of possibilities and as you can imagine there are a lot of ocean and water themed events and books and things that we have going on for that theme because it's such a fun one to think about in the summer. So have you wanna kind of walk everybody through how it's set up this year? How has it structured? And I know there's an app to use and youth and adults can get involved, it sounds like. Yeah, so this year summer reading at the libraries for all ages we have two different challenges set up. So one of them is zero through 16 and the other one is for 16 plus. So that would be our adults one. The adults challenge is set up with reading books by genre or type. So some of them might be, read a beach novel or read a book that has been turned into a movie. And with the adult one, you can enter into raffles to win different gift cards to restaurants in the area. There's also the opportunity to win ice cream cones from Adam's farm through the adult challenge. The youth challenge is a little bit different. So we have more challenging or more challenges involved in that. So each week we challenge youth to read a minimum of half an hour, which is pretty easy from all of the visits I made at Allenburg School and Williston Central School. All the kids that I talked to seemed pretty sure they can meet that challenge. And each week that they do that they get a brag tag and then they also get virtual tickets for the raffles. We have challenges set up to read four hours and each time you hit four hours as the mile marker, you get a new price. So it starts with a free book and then it will go to going into the treasure chest to get a treat out of that. And then a free ice cream cone from Adam's farm and that cycle keeps repeating for each four hours. The difference this year, so we are including audio books. We're including if you read to a family member or if a family member reads to you, that counts as reading, graphic novels, books you might read independently. So there's a lot of different ways that kids can participate in this. And then we have a midway raffle in July for some of the prices, which they'll see on the app. And then we also have an end of summer raffle. So all of this is done on the Beanstack app, which we started using during the pandemic and we've transferred to using it completely for the summer reading challenge. You can find the link to that on the Dorothy Allen Memorial Library website. And when you register, it'll show you the adult and the youth one. It's really great. You can do all of your tracking online. You can do it on the app if you prefer. You can even set up family accounts if you have multiple kids in the family. You still only need one email address to do it. Sounds really easy to do. It's good. Yeah, so folks, if they want to get involved, the best thing to do is talk at the library, download the app. What would you recommend folks to take for the next step to get signed up here? Definitely register online. You can do that at any point, any time of the day, just by going to the library website and following the link there. But once they do register, especially for the youth, I want to encourage them to come talk to us because just for registering, the youth get exclusive free book to start the summer. And then they can also take a look at the display in the youth area. I'm kind of keeping my eye out over here because I see some people admiring it right now, but we have all of the raffle prizes on display. So they can come get amped up for the summer because they can see what they might win. And I know you've got a lot of great events planned. I think that the kick-off's coming up under the week. It is, yes. So we're starting the summer reading challenge with a kick-off event this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. That's going to be in the town green and it's with the big blue trunk. We don't have a rain date yet, but if it's rainy this weekend, we will publish that information as soon as we're able to reschedule. We also have a couple of theaters coming by this summer. So we have Lyric Theater performing Ivy and Bean. We have the Very Mary Theater performing Annie Junior and those are going to be out on the town green also. And we have a couple of science enthusiasts coming to talk to us about sharks and fossils or about pollinator. So we have a ton of people coming this summer and even a Vermont author, Angela Kunkel, is coming to talk to us about her book that she published with Penguin. So a lot of ocean-themed events and even some that aren't ocean-themed. A lot, as always, lots of good events lined up for the library this summer. Remember, we had the pandemic the last couple of years, but I know we get really good participation in summer reading each year, it seems like. Yeah, so this is actually, I'm very excited. This is my first year doing a summer reading challenge here and the enthusiasm so far has been wonderful. So it looks like, yeah, folks that get involved, get started kicking off and lots of opportunities for people to get raffle prizes, ice cream cones, get a book to start out for kids. Any other pieces we didn't cover that you want to share? You know, just that it's also a really wonderful opportunity for teams to volunteer. So any teenagers who are looking for a couple hours to spend at the library each week, we are looking for volunteers just to help us give out the prizes during the summer as people earn their free books or ice cream vouchers or treasure chest toys. We would love to have someone helping us hand those out to make sure no one has to wait too long for their prize. Thanks for everything you're doing, Bonnie. I know there's a lot to coordinate here on that, especially navigating the Oceans theme and all the events and tracking. And I think it's a great community event as always. Thanks for coming on today and hopefully we'll see a lot of folks around this summer participating. Yeah, thank you. And I hope to see everyone here participating. Thanks, Bonnie. Thank you. So to close out the program this month, a few town announcements to share. The select board will hold a public hearing on a proposed development bylaw amendment to establish the form-based code overlay district and an official townwide map at its July 5th meeting at 7.15 p.m. in the Beckett-McGuire meeting room at Town Hall. This will also be available over Zoom. This proposal is the end product of the My Taft Corners project that's been taking place over the past two years. To learn more and how to participate in the hearing, please visit the town website or stop by the town hall. And we're also gearing up for the town's annual Independence Day celebration. It's gonna occur from July 2nd to July 4th. Activities plan to include the Fun Run, Ice Cream Social and Band Concert, the parade, activities on the green, and culminate with the fireworks. Also, if you wanna check out the town website for more information, and if you're interested in registering to be in the parade, all the information is available there. We're giving our Recreation Parks Department a call. So that's gonna wrap up our show this month. It's great to be back on What's Up, Williston. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you around town.