Crews respond to pole barn fire near Black Hawk

Firefighters in the Black Hills were kept busy with a fire northwest of Black Hawk earlier this week. The Black Hawk Fire Department says it happened in an area of North High Meadows Drive just before 3 p.m. Tuesday. Crews arriving on the scene found a pole barn engulfed in flames. Firefighters were able to stop the fire from spreading to a nearby home. The cause of the fire is unknown. No one was hurt.
KELO-TV CBS/MyNetworkTV/CW+ 11 Sioux Falls

Donation of a fire suppression device will help Box Elder first responders act quickly

VIDEO: In a small town like Box Elder, often it’s the police, not the fire department, that arrives to a blaze first. “Generally when law enforcement arrives, their main concern is to get people out of the structure because they’re not firefighters, so this gives them a tool to assist the fire department in allowing to keep that fire possibly suppressed,” said Derek Wingfield, public information officer for the City of Box Elder. To help police fight fires, the Mount Rushmore Masonic Lodge In Rapid City donated a fire suppression device to the Box Elder Police Department. The compact, strong devices are designed to fit in the trunk of squad cars and are activated by simply pulling the pin and throwing it .
KOTA-TV ABC 3 Rapid City

State and national agencies team up for wildfire training

South Dakota National Guard helicopter pilots are partnering with state wildland firefighters to conduct aerial water delivery training. The annual practice serves as a refresher training for both National Guard Black Hawk pilots and state wildland firefighter ground personnel. Helicopters are used to gather 500 gallons of water at a time to drop on a simulated wildland fire. The training is Friday, April 26 near the Angostura Reservoir in the Black Hills. Use of drones in the area during training is prohibited.
South Dakota Public Broadcasting

How does South Dakota’s emergency preparedness compare to the rest of the country?

In an emergency, we count on the quick response of police officers, EMS workers and firefighters to keep our families and communities safe. Researchers from Rainbow Restoration set out to discover which states are the best prepared for an emergency, utilizing Bureau of Labor Statistics to find the number of first responders per 10,000 residents. They took the number of police officers, sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and paramedics and divided the totals by the state’s working-age population. According to their research, South Dakota has 46.9 first responders per 10,000 people. Although South Dakota has 26.49 police officers per 10,000 people, the state has the third-least amount of firefighters, with only 6.8 per 10,000.
KDLT-TV NBC/FOX 46 Sioux Falls