JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. –
Months of tedious preparation recently paid off for the 628th Civil Engineer Squadron Fire Emergency Services Flight upon earning its accreditation with the Commission on Fire Accreditation International.
The unit is the 14th in the Department of Defense and sixth in the Air Force to receive CFAI accreditation, currently conferred to approximately 135 fire departments in the U.S. overall.
Within the Air Force, CFAI accreditation was initially catalyzed in the '90s at the Air Force Academy in Colorado under the leadership of the Academy fire chief, Ernst Piercy, said Master Sgt. Michael Patterson, assistant chief of training for the 628 CES Fire Emergency Services Flight. The subsequent grass roots effect within the fire protection community has led several fire departments around the Air Force to follow the example for more than a decade, he said.
In early 2009, Charleston's Fire Emergency Services Flight took its own steps toward joining the elite group by becoming a registered agency around the same time as a successful yet grueling unit compliance inspection, priming the flight for the accreditation process ahead.
"The process is really close to the UCI. The only thing that's difference is we don't do any type of performance, whereas in a UCI the fire department will go through several types of exercises and get evaluated," Sergeant Patterson said. "Once the UCI was over with, that's when we began the process to get prepared for the peer-assessment team, which came down in November."
Preparations for a peer-assessment visit can take one to three years of dedicated work, Sergeant Patterson said, but the flight was inspection-ready in seven months, at which point the CFAI sent a three-person, peer-assessment team to conduct an on-site assessment.
The assessment included a comprehensive review of water supply systems, fire safety inspections, firefighter training records, dispatching procedures, financial planning, apparatus maintenance and many other operational topics.
The weeklong look at 275 demanding performance indicators and core competencies resulted in a recommendation for national accreditation through CFAI, but the culmination of the flight's hard work wasn't finally realized until March 9, when Deputy Fire Chief James Copeland and Sergeant Patterson traveled to Orlando, Fla., to convene at the CFAI's semiannual meeting.
There, a CFAI review panel, consisting of an 11-member cross-section of the fire service industry, including fire departments, city and county management, code councils, the Department of Defense, and the International Association of Firefighters, unanimously voted to approve the 628 CES Fire Emergency Services Flight for international accreditation.
For Sergeant Patterson, the announcement came as a relief, he said, and what it meant in the end for Joint Base Charleston to have an accredited fire emergency response force was certainly a worthwhile investment.
"Obtaining our accreditation is, by no means, an end goal; but a renewed commitment of the fire emergency services to the community," Sergeant Patterson said. "It took everyone on the operations side and our staff ... from our fire inspectors, our training, all the way up to our managerial level of deputy and fire chiefs."