• OPEN INCORPORATED, makers of the SafetyPAD® suite of technology products for emergency medical services (EMS), continues to provide critical tools to assist D.C. Fire & EMS's Street Calls program. The program has been in place since 2008, and this year alone D.C. Fire & EMS has reduced the most chronic users of the 911 system calls by more than 48 percent. D.C. Fire & EMS's implementation of the Street Calls program was a response to an EMS task force recommendation to develop an outreach program for patients with chronic needs to reduce misuse of 911 EMS and transport delays. SafetyPAD's electronic patient care reporting (ePCR) provides D.C. Fire & EMS with real-time statistical analysis and tools to identify those individuals who use 911 EMS transport services the most. The department can then proactively make sure callers are connected with appropriate preventive care and other services, thus ensuring department resources are used most optimally in support of the public.

• KME recently recognized its sales representative organizations (SROs) for outstanding sales and service performance. KME's Pinnacle Award recognizes organizations that have had significant growth over previous years. This year's winners included Safe Industries of Piedmont, South Carolina, and Bulldog Fire Apparatus of Woodville, Massachusetts, while Metz Fire & Rescue, of Guelph, Ontario, was the top award winner. KME's Summit Club recognizes SROs that have had the highest overall sales volumes over the past year. This year's winners included NAFECO of Decatur, Alabama, and Bulldog Fire Apparatus of Woodville, Massachusetts, with First Priority Emergency Vehicles of Manchester, New Jersey, taking top honors. KME's Vision Award is a special award that isn't based solely on sales or numbers. This award recognizes an organization that has made investments in its business at all levels-including training, service, personnel, branding, and sales-that have significantly affected market share in its region and overall ability to service its customers. The awards went to Cascade Fire & Safety from the western region, Mac's Fire & Safety from the midwest region, Safe Industries from the southeast region, and First Priority Emergency Vehicles from the eastern region.

• GLOBE, DUPONT, AND THE NATIONAL VOLUNTEER FIRE COUNCIL (NVFC) have announced three more recipients in the 2013 Globe Gear Giveaway Program. The Axtell (NE) Volunteer Fire and Rescue and Jasper Volunteer Fire Department, Duffield, Virginia, will each receive four sets of gear. The Lilbourn (MO) Volunteer Fire Department will receive two sets.

Axtell Volunteer Fire and Rescue, in rural Nebraska, has 19 active members who respond to about 100 calls per year as well as deliver mutual aid to nearby communities. All of the department's gear is greater than 20 years old and has been passed down to new fire department volunteers for many years. The Jasper Volunteer Fire Department in Duffield, Virginia, has also been struggling because of the economy. Protecting a population of more than 3,000, the 20 active firefighters have to make do with an inadequate number of sets of gear, all of which are more than 10 years old. The Lilbourn (MO) Volunteer Fire Department serves a population of 6,000 in New Madrid County, Missouri. The department's small annual operating budget only covers the cost of fuel and repairs to equipment. The 14 firefighters cover their own community as well as assist with tanker support for surrounding communities. Any new equipment must be purchased either through donations or from the firefighters' own pockets.

• E-ONE was recently awarded a contract for 18 custom eMAX™ pumpers from the United States Air Force. The 18 new eMAX pumpers are top-mount configurations on Typhoon® chassis with long cabs. The pumpers will feature 1,250-gallon-per-minute pumping capability, 500-gallon water tanks, and

Chris Mc Loone

CM: What is the biggest mistake fire departments make when selecting a pump for their apparatus?

BS: People have a tendency to think they have to sacrifice performance to gain space on the apparatus. Everyone's struggling with how to do more with less. They are weighing the different options and they feel like sometimes they have to give up the performance of their apparatus. Firefighters never know what they're going to be called on to do, and so they have to be prepared for the worst possible hazards. We want to make sure they are equipped as much as possible. So, we've spent a good bit of time trying to develop products that will allow them to continue to have the quality, the reliability, and the performance that they expect out of a Hale product and a smaller footprint. The QMAX-XS is a prime example of that. It gives them the versatility to shrink down from a standard pump house size of 42 inches to as small as 28 inches and gain back as many 16 inches on the pump panel size.

CM: What do you think is the most important issue right now in the fire service, and how is Hale addressing it?

BS: I think that the fire service struggles with how to continue to provide the high level of service it has conditioned the public to expect based on the current budgetary requirements. So they are always looking at how to continue to do more with, it seems, less and less all the time. We've spent a good bit of our effort trying to make sure they are able to maximize what they have, whether it's having extended operating performance and overengineering the equipment to make sure it always has plenty of reserve capability in it so that they're never left in a lurch; whether it's making sure that it's got the quality they can rely on so they're not worried about breaking down at a critical point; or whether it's a situation where they can do it in a smaller footprint and therefore get more on their apparatus. When you look at what we've done on the pump house design and also some of the innovations we've had on the electronics side of the industry-a lot of the manual valves can be replaced with electronic valves and a lot of the gauges can be done with touchscreens in a much smaller footprint than anything in the past.

CM: What do you think is the most important innovation in the fire service during the past five years?

BS: There's been a good bit that's come out, but I would have to say the eDraulic tools that were introduced by HURST Jaws of Life® are the most innovative things, and they've really opened up a whole other avenue for rescue. Having the same capability as a standard hydraulically driven rescue tool on a self-contained platform has given rescuers much more versatility in a package that is easy to deploy and quick to be able to get to where they need it. And, it can go in a footprint on a truck that is 40 percent less than what was done in the past. We were surprised. I was with the HURST business before coming over to the fire suppression side for IDEX, and we were shocked at how quickly the market took to the product. I think it's a testament to how much the market really needed it and what we were able to get done in the finished package to make sure it performed to the level that people expected out of a product that had that kind of brand to it.

CM: Is there anything in the pipeline right now at Hale that you can talk about?

BS: As a publicly traded company, we can't get into a whole lot of new product development that is in the pipeline. I can assure you that we have some pretty exciting things that are there. But from a process standpoint, what I can share is that we are we are finishing up our consolidation. We are adding on additional square footage in our Phase 2 construction. And, we've had everything consolidated in this facility since November 2012 from a production stan