NSVFA Memorial Service will be Sept. 15, at the museum in Kearney

   The summer has been flying by and fire activity is picking up. At the time of writing the SEAT is online, and currently stationed is Scottsbluff. At the time of writing of this we are on the tail end of one of the heat waves where we had record breaking heat. In the western side of the side there has been numerous new fire starts.  Alliance had a large fire that was just over 6,500 acres.  Everyone stay safe as it looks like we might have another busy fire season continuing this year, as we really no longer really have seasons because they are the threats for wildland fires continuing through the whole year. 

   In a couple weeks we will be meeting up in Chadron to have Fire School and E Board meeting. At this meeting we review Fire School and all of the evaluations, as well as start on budgets getting them ready for conference. The NSVFA Memorial Service will be Sept. 15, at the museum in Kearney. This will be the only memorial service for the NSVFA this year.

   I was just at meeting with the US Small Business Office of Advocacy in Kearney NE. They were there to discuss a few items, one of which was the OSHA proposed changes. There again if the proposed rules go through, and as written, there will be big impacts on all fire departments in the US. It was a good discussion; it was more of a listening session where they wanted to hear our concerns with how OSHA has proposed the rule change and incorporated by reference the NFPA standards. There were three of these meetings and hopefully by zoom where it could be after business hours. They also talked about another interesting topic coming from the DOJ that had to do with ADA compliance with websites and social media. This was the first time hearing about this and this is an issue that is present and there will be a 2 to 3 year time frame to become compliant. From the meeting they also said this applied to Social Media, for example, if you put out a facebook post with a picture, there has to be ADA compliant description of what is in the picture. If you have a website it will have to meet ADA, forms on your website, would need to meet ADA. As I mentioned before this was a new topic and will hopefully find more out about this in the future, but, you need to take a look and be aware that this could affect your department. 

   They also brought up that OSHA is also looking at creating rules for heat illness and injury, violence in the workplace for healthcare, and infectious disease. So we will need to be on the lookout and watch what is going with these items, as again, they could have an impact on fire and EMS.

   Everyone Stay Safe. Thanks

Shad Bryner,

NSVFA President