Thoughts from the Tailboard
As you get or read this month’s paper, Easter is here or just days away. Easter always seems like the start of spring and with spring comes thoughts of the upcoming fire season. As I put the finishing touches on this month’s ramblings, we are dealing with high winds and a number of fires. The biggest is the Qury fire near Custer at over 5,000 acres. I know many other departments around the State are dealing with similar issues. Nebraska has a 35,000 acres grass fires. As so many have said, we no longer have a summer fire season, we have a four-season year-round fire season.
Congratulations to the Pierre FD for recently being featured in the Provident Insurance online bulletin. Nice write up and picture, so just a quick shout out to all the Pierre Firefighters and nice to see them receive some national recognition.
While noting the involvement of departments around the State, a “way to go” to the departments that went to Texas and south to help with all the fires down there. It’s always great when firefighters and departments are willing and able to make that commitment. That goes also to those departments that travel across the State to help us out. South Dakota is well represented.
Ok, time to spout off. In the past 30 or so years I have been fortunate to been selected as a Peer Reviewer for the Assistance to Firefighter Grants, (AFG) 20-25 times. Some narratives have been excellently written. Others, well you could tell that the day before deadline, someone said oh crud we got to get our application in.With the increase in artificial intelligence, (AI), you know that some, departments will have AI write their entire grant application. I’m not opposed to AI. I’m opposed to the department who uses it to write their application. I know some people see nothing wrong with using AI for their application, however, I do. If you can’t figure out what you need to say, then don’t. I hope the National Fire Academy and whoever will have some safeguards built into the program to prevent using AI or at least declare if AI assisted in the application.
Since I’m talking about AI, I can see the day some Incident Commander grabs their laptop or whatever at the scene of a fire and says, “AI, how do I put out this fire in a 100 ft X 100 ft commercial building? I can almost picture the answer, duh, put water on it!!! Ok, enough soap boxing.
State Fire School is just two months away, I hope you got your classes picked out, rooms covered, and all the other great stuff that goes on at fire school. There is no reason for anyone to say they couldn’t find a class that interested them, or I’ve taken a ladders class, or a pump class, or whatever. If you can’t find a class with something new, then you must know it all and you should be instructing at district and state fire schools. Let us know.
Let me put my Treasurer hat on for a minute. I know in this month’s paper, there are two reports on the State Fund and General Fund. These are the two most important pieces of information for all of you along with the Net Worth as of December 31, 2025. They will be presented at the Membership meeting, and a motion will be made to accept them. So please take a minute to look them over. I can tell you your SD Firefighters Association, Inc. is in excellent financial condition.
With that I’ll close for this month. Stay safe and pass on your knowledge.
Denny Gorton, Treasurer