During their 5 p.m. meeting today, Columbus councilmen will approve a revised standards of cover needed for Columbus Fire and Rescue to receive national accreditation.
In December, a peer assessment team from the Center for Public Safety Excellence’s Commission on Fire Accreditation International evaluated the department’s response procedures before recommending approval for accreditation. The accreditation would make CFR one of about 200 departments in the United States to receive the distinction and the only one in Mississippi.
CFR accreditation manager Mike Chandler said the standards of cover is one of three documents the department has to develop as part of the accreditation process. It is a risk assessment that details types and frequency of incidents CFR responded to over a set amount of time, as well as the risks posed by residential and commercial structures throughout the city limits, Chandler said. The report also details the number and types of resources sent to calls and how long it takes to respond to them.
“Based on their visit, we had to make two changes to our standards of cover, and we’re going back before the city council to adopt the two recommendations,” Chandler said. “The changes dealt with our critical tasking list, which is what we send to fires. We had to make changes to the way we were supposed to report response times mainly for structure fires. They wanted us to evaluate it being a moderate risk, which is residential units, and high risk, which is commercial and industry.”
CFR will go before the CFAI in March to show it has taken steps to address 14 recommendations from the peer assessment team before the decision is made to give the department national accreditation. To be one of 200 nationwide out of about 38,000 departments with the designation would be a testament to the work CFR personnel have put in to best serve Columbus, Chandler said.
“We’re in elite company,” he said.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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