The Wagontown Fire Company recently completed an internal review of our policies, procedures as well as a risk assessment. The VAP Program which was sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management, Honeywell First Responder Products and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation provided the Vulnerability Assessment program free of charge to those who were accepted to complete the process.

The Vulnerability Assessment Program (VAP) is designed to give department leaders a clear picture of the challenges their department faces in trying to reduce unnecessary risk to firefighters. And to provide the supporting documents a chief needs to help others understand important safety issues.

The process looks at everything from Fire Ground operations to policies and procedures used within the fire station and fire department related events.

The result of the Vulnerability Assessment Program (VAP). The goal is to create a user-friendly, web-based tool that fire chiefs, safety officers and others can use to evaluate areas of risk within their department that could lead to near misses, serious injuries and line-of-duty deaths.

By answering a series of questions, the user will receive a vulnerability ranking and a set of corrective recommendations. These could include a list of resources, such as NFPA standards, or sample protocols from departments that have implemented a seatbelt policy or a health and wellness initiative, for example.

A report was generated and provided us a fresh look into what we do and how we do it, in which we have made some operational changes already from this report.

Wagontown is always striving and committed to providing the best possible service to our residents and visitors who pass through our response districts, and this tool will us continue to do just that.