With the Monroe Police and Fire Appreciation Week coming up next week, the Monroe Monitor decided to take the opportunity to share some information about Snohomish County Fire District #3 and to highlight a couple of the paramedic firefighters who work in Monroe.
The Monroe Fire Department serves the residents of Snohomish County Fire District #3, which includes the city of Monroe. The district area encompasses 55 total square miles, with an estimated population of around 29,000 residents. In both 2012 and 2013, the Monroe Fire Department handled just over 3,275 calls per year.
Monroe's staff includes a mix of full-time paid firefighters and paramedics, volunteers, officer personnel and shop employees. In addition to providing firefighting and medic services to the district, the department is also responsible for building inspections and for facilitating public outreach to provide fire prevention educational services throughout the community.
They also contract with Snohomish County Fire District #5, in Sultan, to provide them with paramedic services. This is because, while firefighters are all typically Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), all EMTs are not paramedics. Both basic and intermediate level EMTs can perform a vast array of life-saving functions, but paramedics are needed to deliver certain medications that EMTs are not allowed to administer. Paramedics are also needed to perform invasive procedures like intubations and bone IVs.
The Monroe Fire Department participates in opportunities like the recent Monroe Police vs. Fire flag football fundraiser which took place in September and raised nearly $4,000 for the Boys and Girls Club in Monroe.
Pete Parrish and Jamal Beckham are both firefighter paramedics in Monroe.
"They both contribute an enormous amount to the success of our fire district,GÇ¥ said District 3 Fire Chief Jamie Silva. "Jamal is a rescue swimmer and is very involved in our Hazmat team. Pete oversees ordering our medical supplies and our address sign program. Both of them are career firefighter paramedics with our department.GÇ¥
Jamal Beckham, who grew up in Bellevue, has worked for the Monroe Fire Department for 11 years. The 41-year-old father of two lives in Sammamish with his family. He appreciates the department's shift structure, which dictates that firefighters work 48 hour shifts, with four days off in between.
Beckham has been a paramedic for a total of 12 years, having worked for a private ambulance company prior to coming to work for the department. Once he was hired by Monroe, he attended the Washington State Patrol's Fire Training Academy, a 3-month academy which takes place in North Bend. Firefighter trainees live in North Bend four days per week, training up to 10 hours per day.
Beckham loves the unpredictability of being a firefighter paramedic. Not a Monday-through-Friday, sit-behind-a-desk type of person, he loves the fact that, when he gets to work, he has no idea what types of challenges the day might bring. "That makes work enjoyable for me,GÇ¥ said Beckham.
During his time at the department, Beckham has sought ways to continually evolve and flourish as a firefighter. He has found tremendous value in continuing his education and cultivating new skills which enhance his ability to perform his job.
"I love to learn,GÇ¥ said Beckham. "That's how I keep myself motivated.GÇ¥
In addition to being a paramedic and a firefighter, Beckham serves as a rescue swimmer, a swift-water rescue technician, a rope rescue technician and a hazmat team technician.
The Hazardous Materials Response Team is a multi-jurisdictional team made up of 10 departments throughout Snohomish County. Because hazardous material incidents require specialized training and equipment, it is cost-prohibitive for individual fire departments to facilitate their own exclusive teams, thus the collaborative method in Snohomish County has been successful.
The team has access to three specialized hazmat vehicles which are dispersed throughout the county.
"We have about nine technicians from this department that are part of the team,GÇ¥ said Beckham. "We can get paged to a call essentially anywhere in the county depending on the scale of it.GÇ¥
Being a part of the hazmat team requires additional training time every year, which suits Beckham perfectly fine. He's broadened his scope of responsibility for the hazmat team, and currently serves as the Snohomish County Hazmat Team's Training Committee Chairman.
Along with all the positive aspects of being a paramedic firefighter, Beckham admits that there can be times when the job is absolutely heart-wrenching. Sometimes, even the most well-executed rescue missions do not end with a favorable result.
Beckham knows what that feels like; he recovered a 14-year-old Everett boy from Lake Tye in 2012. A victim of accidental drowning, the child later died from his injuries. Beckham recalled that, at the time of the incident, he had just recently accomplished his rescue swimmer certification.
"That day, on our end, everything worked perfectly,GÇ¥ said Beckham. "We got called, we showed up on scene, and within two minutes we had the kid out of the water.GÇ¥
He shared that having to contend with the reality that the child didn't survive the incident was difficult.
In the future, Beckham hopes to continue learning new skills and would like to eventually become part of the technical rescue team which would enable him to perform things like rescues in confined spaces, high-angle rope operations, trench rescue and structural collapse. Similar to the hazmat team, the technical rescue team is regional, serving Snohomish County as a whole.
Beckham is not planning on changing careers anytime soon.
"I got into this job and right away I realized how much I loved it,GÇ¥ said Beckham. "I can't think what in the world I would ever do.GÇ¥
Firefighter and paramedic Pete Parrish has been with the Monroe Fire Department since 2008. The married father of four lives in Leavenworth, and loves the streamlined commutability of his 48-hour shifts at the department.
Like Beckham, Parrish grew up in Bellevue and coincidentally, the two graduated from high school together. "I didn't even know he worked here until I walked in on my very first day,GÇ¥ said Parrish.
Parrish left Washington after high school, and set to work obtaining a degree in forestry from the University of Idaho. He received his bachelor's degree in 1995, and set his sights on becoming employed as a firefighter. In August of 1996 GÇô the same month he got married GÇô he got a job with the Idaho Falls Fire Department and moved there with his new wife.
It was during his 10 years in Idaho Falls that he decided to obtain his paramedic certification.
"I was always intrigued by the medical side of it, even when I was in college as a volunteer,GÇ¥ said Parrish. "That was the first thing I asked in my chief's interview in Idaho Falls; they asked if I had any questions and my only question was, "How long do I have to be here before I can be a paramedic?'GÇ¥
Eventually, Parrish and his wife made the decision to move to Leavenworth, in order to be closer to her family.
Since coming to the Monroe Fire Department six years ago, Parrish has become an integral part of the team. Not unlike Beckham, he has continued to take on new responsibilities and tackle new challenges. One of the programs that Parrish helped to spearhead is the department's address sign program.
Parrish explained that, in rural districts like Monroe, addresses can be difficult to locate at times. As a method of mitigating this challenge, in 2012 the department began providing blue reflective address signs to fire district constituents, free of charge. This year, due to budgetary constraints, the department had to begin charging for the signs, but will still provide them to citizens at cost.
"These things are very reflective,GÇ¥ said Parrish. "Even in the daytime they pop out.GÇ¥
Additionally, just this past summer, Parrish took over responsibility for the Emergency Medical Services supply room. With a total of five ambulances and an average rate of around nine emergency calls per day, keeping on top of the medical supplies is absolutely crucial.
Along with keeping a firm handle on the supply of medications, bandages and hard goods such as IV needles and intubation tubes, expiration dates need to be closely tracked so that old supplies are discarded in a timely fashion and new products are readily available.
Parrish is currently working on implementing an automated system which will help him track things like order quantities, stock depletion and expiration dates a little more fluidly.
Like Beckham, Parrish loves the unpredictability of being a firefighter and a paramedic. He appreciates the dynamic of never really knowing what will happen next, and works hard to stay levelheaded in all circumstances.
"What's nice about Monroe is that all of us get a chance to be firefighters and engine operators,GÇ¥ said Parrish. "So I'm not assigned specifically to the medic unit every single shift.GÇ¥
Monroe is unique in that structure; fire departments do not always facilitate this level of flexibility for their employees. Oftentimes, paramedics are limited to providing paramedic services, and aren't necessarily given the opportunity to fight fires.
"It's a really good thing,GÇ¥ said Parrish. "It alleviates people getting burned out on the same thing over and over and over again.GÇ¥
Monroe's Police and Fire Appreciation Week takes place from Sunday, Nov. 16 through Saturday, Nov. 22. For more information about the Monroe Fire Department, please visit the website at: http://www.monroefire.org/index.cfm.
Comments
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.
Sign in to comment