Jeffersonville Fire Department 150 Years | Page 13

CHANGES IN FIRE SERVICE VanGilder , who started in 1994 , has seen a lot of evolution within the department during his time there . Staffing has doubled and training has expanded even more than that . In some cases , practices that were used for years have been modernized at the national level and adopted by local departments .
" We used to do pretty much standard ' vertical ventilation ,' with a structure fire ,” Van- Gilder said . "[ That ' s ] where you cut a hole in the roof and take a pike pole and punch a hole in the ceiling ... you have some place for all that heat and smoke to go .
PARADE JULY 3 , 2021
" That was the standard for literally 125 , 130 years ." But now , he said , the National Institute of Standards and Technology Fire Research Division " figured out that we were basically creating a chimney and we were in the middle of it ."
Jeffersonville Fire Department / 150 years 13