Kahill Updates Council on Fire and Emergency Management

Going forward during their monthly work sessions, the Oradell Mayor and Council will invite the department heads to give a brief overview of what each group has gone through during the past year. Last night, Derek Kahill gave his overview of the Fire Department and Office of Emergency Management (OEM).

A police officer in town, Kahill also volunteers with the Fire Department as Fire Chief and was appointed as Coordinator of OEM for the borough.

"With regards to OEM, we've had an interesting winter thus far," Kahill said. "One system we use to alert residents to the weather conditions is NIXLE, it's a free service that provides text messages or email alerts to a residents cell phone. We have over 750 users in the borough."

According to Kahill, another system OEM uses is the Reverse 911 call system which is primarily used for serious emergencies and school closing information. Going forward, the department will have a fully functioning lightening detection system at all borough ballfields - the detection system will signal a siren and a strobe light will go off when lightening is detected with a 5-mile radius of town.

"They are solar powered and the main unit is located on the roof [of borough hall]," Kahill said. "The system will go through testing later this week by someone from Strike Guard."

In regards to the 43-member volunteer fire department, OFD responded to 403 calls last year, with 160 of those being reported during the March Nor'easter. There were two major structure fires in Oradell, but for the most part, OFD responded to mutual aid calls for major structural fires.

"We have our new rescue pumper and upgraded the tools known as the jaws of life to better deal with today's automotive technology," Kahill said. "We've revamped our training to include additional live burning training at a facility in Bergenfield on top of the state mandated training. We took delivery last year of an additional inflatable rescue boat, which was funded through Homeland Security at no cost to the borough."

As of today, OFD has responded to 29 calls this year.