Fire Prevention Week 2022 to bring safety education to Robins; Chief Johnson shares more on recent international accreditation

ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. — The Robins Fire Department recently received an accredited agency status from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International at the Center for Public Safety Commission hearings following a four-year process, according to Fire Chief Forest Johnson of the 78th Civil Engineering Squadron.

“It’s a really thorough look on the services that we provide to our customers, our customers being anybody that works on the base — whether they’re visiting or retired or not,” Johnson said. “It’s just making sure that we’re providing the best level of service that we can as far as response times, equipment, personnel and training.”

He wanted to give a shout-out to Jeffrey Kinzer, station chief and accreditation manager.

“If it wasn’t for him, we would have not gotten to where we were to be able to be accredited,” he added.

With Fire Prevention Week taking place from Oct. 9-15, he said the personnel would be offering some community engagement opportunities there on base, visiting work centers, childcare centers and the main gate among other locations to hand out fire safety materials.

He advised that people should regularly check that their smoke detectors are working, saying to change the batteries in those that run off that type of power source, especially when it is time to “spring forward and leap back.”

He said to have a fire extinguisher handy in your residence as well — but not too close to where you cook your food.

“Make sure that the extinguisher is somewhere where it’s not going to get moved or misplaced, and make sure that the extinguisher is not right next to the stove,” he added. “Most of the fires in the kitchen start on the stove. And remember, when you have an extinguisher, the guidance is to stand back eight to 10 feet. If you have a grease fire and you get too close with that extinguisher, I’ve seen times where you hit it, it spreads that grease out and actually catches something else on fire in the kitchen.”

He said that when someone cooks with grease, it is safer to keep its appropriately sized lid close by so you can place it over a fire then quickly turn off the burner.

“Use an oven mitt to put the lid on it if you can safely without burning yourself, but that’ll make the fire go out,” he explained. “Heat, fuel and oxygen are the three things it takes for a fire to burn.”

Johnson oversees the work of 72 personnel in the Fire and Emergency Services Flight and another 10 in the Emergency Management Flight.

“The Emergency Management Flight takes care of all the chemical, biological, radiological [and] nuclear training for the military personnel,” Johnson said. “They also run our Emergency Operations Center, Mobile Emergency Operations Center and they do a lot of training for all of the military members on the base.

“The Fire and Emergency Services Flight is kind of like a standard fire department, except we have Air Force firefighter responsibilities along with structural facilities and medical responses.”

He said what happens during a normal day in the life can vary, with some days seeing no emergencies and some seeing as many as 10. Johnson said many days typically include staff meetings and training analysis to ensure firefighters are completing their work timely and effectively.

Some of this training can include enclosed safety exercises, he added.

“Our guys are confined space rescue-trained,” Johnson said. “There are a lot of confined spaces — whether somebody’s in a manhole cover or working in the wing of an aircraft — so the guys are prepared proficiently on confined space.”

The situations the department might be dispatched to can also vary in kind, from medical calls to accidents in the industrial area to in-flight emergencies as well as hazmat responses.

“With this base being a depot with aircraft maintenance, we’ve got a very robust hazmat team,” he explained. “All of our people that ride the firetrucks are hazmat technicians, trained and certified with the highest level of hazmat certification you can get.”

The flight currently holds mutual aid agreements with Peach, Houston and Macon-Bibb counties as well as the departments in Perry, Centerville and Warner Robins. He said the personnel train with people from the Macon-Bibb department at facilities specializing in structure fires as well as aircraft fires, where they also invite workers from the Macon Airport to come participate.

Chief Johnson joined the Air Force in 1981, spending 24 years as a military fireman. After retiring out at Robins, he worked two years in the inspector general’s office and three years for the installation commander at the Plant and Programs Office.

When a role in the fire department opened up in 2010, he interviewed for it and was selected, having served in that role for 12 years at this point.

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