Our Mission. Past, Present & Future!
APFD3 was founded in the year 2000 to give fire protection to the communities we serve. Our mission has expanded over the years to provide basic emergency medical services as well. On our department we have EMR’s (formally First Responders) and EMT’s as well as firefighters that respond to emergency calls 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Our 4 stations are spaced throughout our communities to enable the best fire protection possible with the resources we have. Our current PIAL (Property Insurance Association of Louisiana) rating is a 6. Our original rating was a 10 when the department was first founded. The lower this number the cheaper your home insurance rates will be. Each time we have been rated by PIAL our number has lowered and it is our continued mission to maintain this trend. We currently are in the same area with this rating as the majority of fire districts in this area.
Being a rural area providing basic emergency medical services has become a very important part of our mission. Our members frequently respond to calls such as heart attacks, broken bones, vehicle accidents and have even delivered a baby. With ambulance services being a minimum of 10 – 20 miles away, and the nearest hospital being 25 plus miles away, our department can mean the difference in life and death to both residents and visitors to our area. Recently we have been called upon more and more to preform search and rescue missions. Through our protection district runs the Whisky Chitto Creek. Being a popular canoeing destination for many the Whisky Chitto Creek has had its share of accidents. The 8.5 miles of waterway is sparsely accessible by road requiring use of 4 wheel drive vehicles and water craft to locate injured people and transport them to a waiting ambulance. We recently completed a mapping project for the Whisky Chitto which includes mile post on the creek at ever location that we can access the creek by vehicle. This will allow the injured person to know where they are when they call 911. In turn, this allows us to locate them quicker. Before, locating a person that needed help would take up valuable time. In fact the same day we placed the milepost signs on the creek we were paged to a broken leg. The injured person knew the mile post they were at allowing us to drive straight to them.
Our mission will be to continue to improve our services to the communities we serve and expand these services as we are called upon to do to meet the changing times.
Chief
Les Kolb
