Your Fire Chief (FY 22-23)

This past year proved to be a significant year for the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District. Our number of dispatched responses continues to rise and is nearing 140,000 calls for service. This is a significant number of calls with some of our fire engines being in the top 1% of the “busiest” units in our Nation.

One of our more memorable incidents lasted for nearly 30 days. A blizzard impacted our mountain communities in late February through March. Many of our firefighters worked without sleep for many consecutive days as they assisted our residents in visitors in unique ways from fighting structure fires utilizing snow cats to hiking and delivering food to trapped residents. There were many operational highlights that occurred during this event. Notably, we deployed a Type-2 Incident Management Team that was led and staffed by County Fire District personnel, our Urban Search and Rescue teams, and Regional Task Force-6 members. Their efforts helped shore up homes and businesses that were in danger of collapsing. Working with Code Enforcement, the San Bernardino County Fire Office of the Fire Marshal inspected structures for damage. In addition, County Fire’s Mountain Division crews led efforts to ensure that every 911 call was responded to in a timely manner.

County Fire completed a “facilities review” this past year. This review highlighted the need for investment into fire station and facilities. Many of our stations are over 30-years old with some of our older fire stations built in the late 1930’s. Upon receiving this information, County leaders demonstrated their support by allocating new funds totaling $49,752,589 for fire station improvements and replacements. This funding covered the full cost of two replacement fire stations in San Bernardino, a new station for Rosena Ranch, property for a future station in Hesperia, complete funding for a station in Yucca Valley, and improvements in our mountain communities.

Hiring and staffing remains a nationwide crisis in the fire service. The County Fire District recognizes the importance of this problem. To address the crisis in San Bernardino County, Fire District leadership placed two captains into recruitment officer positions. These recruitment officers worked with our community members, teaching institutions, and associations to recruit and train the best diverse workforce that was possible.

For the first time in over 20-years, the Fire District hired Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) with the intention of sending EMT’s to paramedic schools. These efforts helped ensure that our residents continued to receive world-class fire, rescue and EMS service while we continue to address this staffing crisis. The Fire District worked with community colleges and private institutions to enroll 26 of our EMT’s into paramedic programs. For the first time, in many years we are closing our vacancy gap with this new recruitment and hiring efforts.

We worked hard to move the needle in many other areas. Among our successes this year:

• Reinforced the Emergency Communication Nurses System program, which redirected nearly 10,000 non-emergency calls for injuries or illnesses with a state-licensed nurse for assessment.
• Rolled out the First Due platform used for pre-planning and for gathering community risk information
• Raised the typing of our wildland handcrews from Type-2IA to a higher level of qualification as Type-1 handcrews.
• Increased our heavy equipment staffing to 24-hour year-round coverage.
• Added a second Community Outreach And Support Team (COAST Team) to serve the San Bernardino city area.In partnership with the San Bernardino City Police Department and San Bernardino County Public Health, the COAST team’s mission is to address the increasing numbers of homeless and permanent residents suffering from mental illness. The program was modeled after County Fire’s COAST1 program in the City of Fontana that we launched in 2021.

I continue to be deeply proud of the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District and each of its members. Our professional staff and uniformed firefighters have consistently responded to our resident and visitors needs with the utmost professionalism ensuring that when our residents need us most, we are there providing the very best all-hazard emergency services.

Yours in Service,

Daniel R. Munsey
Fire Chief/Fire Warden