Firefighter's Right to Know

[Papio Bldg Dept]

The building department has nothing to do with the stickers indicating LWC areas. It is all handled by the fire marshals. We have 13 fire districts in our county and the building department likes to work with them not for them. If we even seem to be doing their work they get a bit upset. Go figure.

We used to have a similar relationship with our Fire Marshall's, however, that relationship has deteriorated, and it is rare if we have any communication with them at all. This is not the case with the local fire department.

 

[gbhammer]

It took me awhile to get into a good working relationship with most of our fire marshals. Joining the Fire Marshals Association helped. Most of them now love to communicate with our department. We spent a year meeting once a week to go over the 2009 codes, and for the first time in the history of the building department, the majority of the fire districts, and the incorporated citys in the County we will all have almost completly the same codes and ammendments. I have also been hosting meetings every other Tuesday for training sessions and round tables so that the inspectors and fire marshals all look at the code from the same page. We even have some local design professionals, and city building officials showing up for these meetings.

There is no reason to big or small to not try to keep up the lines of communication between AHJs we really are not in competition with one another.

 

[FM William Burns]

Additional information or food for thought:

http://mfis.org/mfiswordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Kerber-Handout.pdf

Our department also works close with our building department since we believe we are in the mutual business of protecting the public regardless of individual beliefs or bias associated to how best to accomplish this mission.