VICKSBURG FIRE DEPT. PVT. PATRICK WALTON, right, and Lt. Dewayne Winters test hoses last week in the old Halls Ferry School parking lot.(The Vicksburg Post/MELANIE DUNCAN)

[04/17/02]Six weeks into his assignment as interim fire chief, Keith Rogers said he has his sights on improving efficiency and readiness at the Vicksburg Fire Department.

Rogers, an 18-year veteran of the department, was named interim chief March 1, replacing Kevin Westbrook, chief for four and a half years.

Many of the changes Rogers is making are aimed, directly or indirectly, at lowering the city’s Mississippi State Rating Bureau rating for insurance purposes, he said.

The bureau, a non-governmental organization, rates state fire departments about every three years, assigning each to a class numbered from 10 to one. Vicksburg has been a Class Five for many years while other state cities have rated as high as Class 2. In the past 10 years, millions have been spent on three new stations, all new pumpers and two new super trucks, the newest of which just went into service and cost more than $600,000.

The fire-insurance ratings are a factor affecting insurance rates for homes and businesses in the areas served by the fire department. While the city fire department’s rating would have to be lowered several steps to significantly affect residential fire-insurance rates, a step down of one class to Class Four could mean a reduction in commercial fire-insurance rates of some 3 percent to 4 percent, rating bureau Superintendent of Public Protection Larry Carr said. Commercial buildings with sprinklers could see reductions of up to 5 percent with a one-class improvement in rating, he added.

In 1999, after its last inspection of the VFD, the rating bureau listed nine “improvement statements” for the fire department to reach Class Four. Four of the items dealt with the supply, distribution system, pressure and auxiliary pumping power of water in the city.

Three others building the station near Indiana Avenue south of Interstate 20, beginning and maintaining annual service tests on all Class A pumpers and stress tests on aerial devices and maintaining records on all hose tests are, except for some historical records, in place and being maintained, Rogers said.

The two remaining items are for the department to acquire a training facilities including a training tower and enough “company manning so that a minimum of four firefighters would be maintained on each engine and ladder company.”

“We’re researching the training tower,” Rogers said, adding that the two main options being studied, both on North Washington Street, are to build a tower or to convert the old Valley Mills building behind Station 9.

The department now has 112 people on shift duty, with at least three firefighters assigned to each company. It would need 23 additional firefighters, for a total of 135, to meet the four-firefighter-per-company minimum called for by the rating bureau, Rogers said.

To help accomplish the record-keeping and other inspection tasks mandated by the improvement statements, Rogers said he was creating a layer of middle management in the department. “We’ve got 25 captains who’ve never been used as managers,” he said. “My approach is, That’s a manager out there, manage that.'”

Projects not required by the rating bureau are also on Rogers’ agenda. “We’re going to work at pre-fire planning,” he said, adding he plans to use the cooperative city-county plan for protection of River Region Medical Center as a model for other buildings. “It’s worked so well, we don’t want to stop here,” Rogers said. “We’d like to do this for schools, industries and day-care centers, too.”

In the application of networked-computer technology, the department is decades behind, Rogers said. “We’ve got assistant chiefs driving a 50-mile radius every day just picking up paperwork,” Rogers said. “He needs to be here scheduling.”3

Daily 8 a.m. staff meetings with managing officers are now the norm, Rogers said.

“Things have been getting accomplished, but not in a systematic way,” Rogers said. “We need to know exactly what, when and where things are getting done.”

Fire chiefs are appointed by the city’s elected officials and can be replaced at any time. When Rogers was named interim chief, Mayor Laurence Leyens said a national search would be conducted for a permanent chief.