Sedona Fire District Chief Ed Mezulis and Fire Marshal Dori Booth stopped by the monthly meeting of the community group The Sedona Women on the morning of Thursday, Oct. 12, at the Sedona Public Library.

“I’ve been with the fire district for 23 years, [and] just hit a year as the fire chief,” Mezulis said in his opening remarks. “One of my points of pride is I was the first person to get hired as a firefighter EMT and work my way all the way up to fire chief.”

 

NAH Partnership

Mezulis praised Northern Arizona Healthcare CEO David Cheney, saying he “did not sell us the corporate line, he was very clear that he recognizes what a mess NAH is.”

He added that Cheney has identified the cardiac catheterization laboratory at the Sedona campus of Verde Valley Medical Center as being a health care priority for the area and that NAH is working to have independent contractors in place within the next 60 days in order to have that lab staffed 24 hours a day. 

“[Northern Arizona University] just approached NAH and it’ll be a few years in development, but they are intending to build a medical school at NAU in partnership with NAH and the specific focus will be primary care and family care,” Mezulis said.

The partnership will see the creation of a College of Nursing at NAU with plans to double the number of degrees the college gives out in health care fields. 

Booth said that the best course of action for residents experiencing a medical emergency is to simply call 911 and not attempt to transport themselves outside of Sedona to try to get better care in Flagstaff or Cottonwood.

Staffing

SFD has experienced its own hiring issues in recent years, driven in large part by the lack of affordable housing in the district. The district had scheduled a formal ceremony to swear in 10 new employees prior to its board meeting Tuesday, Oct. 17 however that has been postponed to the Tuesday, Nov. 14 meeting “due to the shortage in uniform requirements,” according to the meeting notes. 

The district has also made conditional job offers for two radio technician positions to a candidate from Rimrock and another from Louisiana.

“We had two radio technician positions [vacant] for four years [and] went through four iterations of hiring,” Mezulis said. “Two of the times we got somebody on the hook, they came out fora site visit, and said ‘Whoa, I can’t afford it,’ [and] turned down the job. We hired by approval of our governing board, a talent scout that found us … four candidates to interview and three of them live in Rimrock.”

Brian Russell also started as a fire inspector on Monday, Oct. 16. Russell was formerly a fire marshal with the Timber Mesa Fire District in Show Low.

“Staffing shortages throughout 2022 due to major medical situations resulted in [fewer] inspections and plan reviews being conducted,” SFD stated in its annual report. “It is anticipated that the numbers will increase again in 2023 based upon preliminary construction and planning meetings, the increase in code consultations and staff returning to full duty.”

Mezulis said that the backlog in duties has been the biggest effect of the inspector vacancy.

“You’ve got a workload designated for a certain number of people and then when you don’t have those people it’s tough to keep up with the workload,” he said. “So filling that position is going to allow us to better balance their inspections, their plans, reviews and get everything caught up.”

Inspections by SFD fell 34% last year to 587 from788 in 2021, while plan reviews fell to 526 in 2022 from 601 in 2021. Home ignition zone assessments saw a 71% increase last year, to 31 from nine in 2021, and there was a 7% increase in code consultations, with 107 completed last year.

Career Shifts

Scheduling changes were among the recruitment and retention strategies that Mezulis touched on.

“Gone are the days of ‘the man of the house.’ That doesn’t exist in our world anymore,” Mezulis said. “Unique to us, a lot of our recent hires, they’re the firefighter [but] their wives, are dentists, physician’s assistants, doctors, and so a lot of those folks are living in Flagstaff, Prescott, or even north Phoenix because their trailing spouses have an established profession. We understand that and that’s why we transitioned our operational shift schedule [to] 48 hours on, 96 off to accommodate those commutes.”

Other strategies SFD intends to pursue include setting up a recruitment retention committee, increasing outreach with Red Rock High School and increasing awareness of fire science career training available through the Valley Academy for Career and Technology Education.

“We had some folks down at Luke Air Force Base Family Day this weekend [who] reached out to some military partners to try to leverage folks getting out of the military and in increased conversations with other local agencies,” Mezulis said.

Mezulis also announced that the SFD Governing Board will be looking to fill a vacancy with the resignation of Eugene “Gene” McCarthy.

Residents interested in applying for the position should visit SedonaFire. org for more information. The vacancy will be filled by board appointment for the remainder of the seat’s term, which runs through November 2026.

Booth reminded attendees to change the batteries in their smoke detectors, andsaid that SFD staff are willing to install batteries for residents that are provided by the residents as part of an effort to reduce the number of falls to which the district responds. 

Booth also argued that there is an annual trend of chimney fires during the winter months and encouraged people “to get their chimneys properly cleaned by a chimney sweep.”

“One of the things that I’ve been doing since I’ve gotten here is [we] just transitioned to a different information management system,” Booth said. “We’re trying to figure out the trends and our hours spent on each different [task] so we can justify additional inspection or community risk reduction staff.”

SFD is also working to have staff training on reptile handling when moving animals out of residences.

“We’re just looking at making sure our policies aligned with all the federal regulations and guidelines to make sure that our people [know] how to better identify snakes, which ones may be endangered because there’s some pretty, pretty big restrictions on” the narrow-headed garter snakes, which are federally threatened, Mezulis said. “We want to make sure we’re aligning with policy and treating the animals correctly, and keeping our public safe, but at the same time, recognizing that we live in the desert.”

The Sedona Women will return to the Sedona Public Library on Thursday.Nov. 9 with a meet-and greet starting at 9:30 a.m., followed by a presentation by club president Helen Jarnes entitled “Sedona Women in the Military.”