Month: June 2020

Crookston Firefighter Tom Feiro is retiring after 36 years as a member of the Crookston Fire Department and Crookston Firefighters Association. Feiro said he felt the time to retire was now. “I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while,” said Feiro. “And interestingly enough, the same feeling came over me when I retired from the University of Minnesota Crookston a year and 10 months ago. I just felt now is the time to do it. I made the decision and submitted my letter of retirement about a month and a half ago effective June 30.”

Feiro said he’ll miss the camaraderie in the department and helping the community. “The camaraderie at the department,” said Feiro. “Helping people in so many different ways, it’s not just fighting fires. It’s amazing what the fire department gets asked to do when people are having a bad day and need some assistance. I won’t miss all the meetings and some of that stuff, but that’s what sticks in my mind.”

Feiro said the bad call stick with you, but times have changed to help get through tough calls. “Bad ones, those do stick in your minds, and every once in awhile, depending on the type of call you’re on, that’s in the back of your mind,” said Feiro. “Are we going to deal with this again? I guess one of the things that changed over my career was the old way of dealing with it was if you went through a real bad situation, you sucked it up, and you didn’t talk to anybody about it. Well, that’s changed because they’ve found over the years that’s detrimental to the firefighters and emergency responders. Later in my career, I got involved with the Critical Incident Stress Management team in helping responders after dealing with a difficult call.”

A few significant incidents for the community stick out to Feiro. “The Opera Block fire was in ’85,” said Feiro. “It wasn’t even a year I’d been on the department yet. That was a big one, and I think we were on it for something like 23 hours. The ’97 flood really impacted the community, and the fire department played such a big role in that. The tornadoes that came through in ’14. We played a big role in that all through the night and into the next day. Those are some of the ones that really stick out.”

Feiro said things have changed a lot from the beginning when Crookston still had open cab trucks and having to rely on farmers for water at rural fires. “I told the guys the other night on Thursday at training, it was my last training, I gave them an idea of where we were at when I came on the department and where we’re at now,” said Feiro. “There were three open cab trucks yet on the fire department. We didn’t have a tanker for the rural calls. They used to get on the landline to call farmers if there was a fire at a house or a barn in the country. And call as many farmers as they could to come with their water trucks to give use water. We didn’t have grassfire fighting equipment; we had brooms. Then, also, we had a group of firefighters who, when they responded, seemed to get to the hall pretty quick. And the lead one was always Bob Cournia. Bob was always sitting in the truck whenever any of us got there. When we went out with Bob, he called his crew the A-Team. There were about 4 or 6 guys who lived on the south end or in the Woods Addition, and Bob always called them the A-team in the early years.”

Trucks have also changed from two- or three-man trucks to holding up to six firefighters and their equipment to change into on the way to a fire. “Most of the trucks were two-man, or three-man cabs, and a lot of them didn’t have seat belts,” said Feiro. “Now all the trucks are seat belts, lots of safety devices in it. You can seat anywhere from three to six firefighters depending on the unit. Our backpacks, our SCBAs (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus), used to be in the side compartments, so you didn’t put that on until you got to the fire. Probably in the late 80s, the trucks started to show up with SCBA brackets in the seat for us.”

Feiro has also been a critical figure in fundraising and grant writing for the association to get new equipment. He said it started with an ATV up to the recently purchased $450,000 truck last year. “Fundraising kind of started back in the early 90s,” said Feiro. “We needed to buy an ATV for grass fires. That’s where we started making pancakes in the morning. Back then, everybody would bring their griddles to the fire hall and set up wherever they could find an outlet. We found out we couldn’t use a lot of outlets being used because we’d be flipping breakers right and left. That was the first thing we fundraised for. Then, we started getting involved in doing an Ox Cart breakfast with the Police Department and Reserves. Over the years, we did a lot of grant writing. We applied for special grants through Bremer a number of times that we’re very helpful. And this last big fundraising event to purchase the latest engine for the rural association, the members started looking up all kinds of grant possibilities and filling out forms. Amazingly, 52 percent of that $450,000 truck was purchased through grants and matching donations that came in. That was phenomenal.”

In retirement, Feiro said he’ll continue to help his wife, Kim, with child care, although they have a goal to one day move closer to their grandkids. “After I retired from the university, I committed to helping my wife with her child care,” said Feiro. “We’ll be doing that for a little bit and be around Crookston for a little while. I guess our ultimate goal is to get closer to our grandchildren, and they’re in western Montana. No real plans yet, but it is a goal of ours.”

Feiro also thanked the members of the fire department and fire association for all they’ve done and will do. “I just want to thank the members of the Crookston Fire Department and the Crookston Firefighters Association for all they’ve done over the years and continue to do,” said Feiro. “I’m very grateful for the working relationships we have with our 13 townships and the City of Crookston to work together to provide a fire and rescue service in the area. Probably one of the proudest moments I had in my career, and I never thought this would happen in my career. But, how we were able to buy the old auto glass specialist building and develop a north station for the long-term future for emergency response in our community and townships.”

Feiro rolls his last hose at a firefighting training Thursday, June 25 – 

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The Crookston City Council will have a joint Ways & Means Committee meeting with the Crookston Housing and Economic Development Authority (CHEDA) Board on Tuesday, June 30, at 6:30 p.m. in the Crookston High School Auditorium. The meeting agenda lists the lone item as a discussion on governmental entity collaboration, and Mayor Dale Stainbrook, who organized the joint meeting, said the focus will include working together, operations, and management. “It’s a governmental entity collaboration discussion,” said Stainbrook. “And then, some operations and management. I guess you’ll have to come to the meeting to find out what’s going on.”

Although he said he didn’t want to get into details when pressed further Stainbrook said the focus is on being on the same page and working together better. “I don’t want to get into detail right now,” said Stainbrook. “I have a list of things. It’s to try to work better together. There are things in the past, and we all need to be on the same page, and that’s kind of where it’s at.”

Stainbrook added he thinks potential candidates for the City Administrator position might see some of the past dirt between the city and CHEDA when looking at the city, and it’s important to show they are now working together. “I’m sure you’ve heard through the grapevine about future potential candidates for administrator,” said Stainbrook. “They don’t pull up the good stuff. They pull up the dirt. We have to show potential candidates that we are working together basically.”

Governor Tim Walz today announced the state has completed more than half a million COVID-19 tests and has reached the milestone of developing a daily capacity of 20,000 COVID-19 molecular tests. Governor Walz says the milestone is thanks to Minnesota’s advanced COVID-19 testing program, first announced two months ago.

“We know when Minnesota comes together as one, we can achieve near-impossible tasks,” said Governor Walz. “I am proud of the Minnesota Department of Health’s partnership with Mayo Clinic, the University of Minnesota, and our state’s health systems to expand our testing capacity, allow us to more accurately track the course of the infection, and keep all Minnesotans safe.”

“Thank you to the health care providers who have worked in partnership with our Administration to achieve this testing milestone,” said Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan. “Robust testing is critical to monitoring the spread of COVID-19. While there is still work to do to remove obstacles to testing for all Minnesotans, we have built a strong and collaborative statewide testing program that will help us keep all Minnesotans safe.”

“We can now provide testing for all Minnesotans who need it,” said Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm. “The testing command center allows us to monitor daily needs and coordinate rapid responses to outbreaks. Testing is a critical first step to preventing the spread of the infection.”

To date, the state has completed a total of 592,955 tests. As part of the state’s testing command center, the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota (U of M) are now able to provide additional testing capacity to more than 265 health care organizations across the state. When health care providers need more testing capacity than they have available at their local laboratories, or an outbreak emerges, the state initiative’s testing command center connects the provider with COVID-10 diagnostic testing through Mayo Clinic Laboratories or U of M labs. The state has deployed this resource for numerous pop-up testing events, including Duluth, Moorhead, St. James, and Faribault, as well as in Mower County and in Minneapolis and Saint Paul following protests and large gatherings in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

“I’m very proud of the Mayo Clinic team who worked tirelessly to apply our global reference laboratory capabilities to ensure every Minnesotan can get COVID-19 testing when and where they need it. To date, Mayo Clinic has provided over 280,000 COVID-19 diagnostic tests to Minnesotans,” said William Morice, M.D., Ph.D., chair of Mayo Clinic’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and president of Mayo Clinic Laboratories. “We have been able to lean into those systems to prioritize the needs of Minnesota and connect the different health systems across the state. We are all in this together.”

Mayo Clinic has been instrumental in providing the courier infrastructure to bring specimens to labs for testing from anywhere in the state, and to deliver supplies, computers, and label printers directly to collection sites in order to streamline the entire process.

The University of Minnesota transformed their labs, previously used for research, into COVID-19 testing facilities. The U of M is also a leader in transformational research on infectious diseases and is helping to advance research that will continue to inform testing strategies in future phases.

“It was clear early in February that our lab capacity had the potential to serve the needs of Minnesota in what became the COVID pandemic,” said Tim Schacker, vice dean for research at the University’s Medical School. “I’m grateful to my faculty colleagues who quickly shifted their focus to develop the diagnostic tests so critical to managing our way through this health crisis.”

For information on how to receive a COVID-19 test, visit mn.gov/covid19.

The Minnesota Department of Health is reporting 315 new cases of COVID-19 and 10 deaths. Polk County is at 79 cases of COVID-19 with 2 deaths as of today. Of the cases in Polk County, 63 of those no longer require isolation as of Thursday, June 25. All the numbers are below.

Updated June 29, 2020
Updated daily at 11 a.m., with data current as of 4 p.m. the previous day.

Data is for cases that were tested and returned positive. All data is preliminary and may change as cases are investigated. Many data points are collected during case interviews. Data presented below is for all cases, regardless of interview status. Data for cases pending interview may be listed as “unknown/missing.”

Not all suspected cases of COVID-19 are tested, so this data is not representative of the total number of people in Minnesota who have or had COVID-19. Cumulative numbers are since Jan. 20, 2020.

• Minnesota COVID-19 Public Dashboard
• Minnesota’s COVID-19 Response and Preparation Capacity
• CDC: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Cases in the U.S.
• Minnesota COVID-19 Modeling

Data in the data tables is correct as of 11 a.m. daily. Dynamic images and maps for case demographics, likely exposure, residence, and residence type will update shortly after 11 a.m. daily and will not work if your browser is in compatibility mode.