When powerful storms ripped through Bemidji Fire Chief Justin Sherwood’s community last month, his fire department quickly became overwhelmed.  

That’s when he called our State Fire Marshal (SFM) division. He got Fire Service Support (FSS) team supervisor John Ehret on the phone and knew he made the right call. 

“That half hour conversation helped me identify exactly what I needed. In a weird way, it was almost like going through a drive-through: you get everything you need and you’re off and running,” said Sherwood. 

The FSS team is the liaison between SFM and Minnesota fire departments. They’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

“We're the support mechanism. When the phone rings from a fire chief that's getting hit hard, we literally we drop what we're doing and we take care of business,” said Ehret. 

Within four hours of that conversation, an FSS team member was at the Bemidji Fire Department, talking Chief Sherwood through exactly what he needed. 

“We're the ones who know the resources,” said Ehret. “We're the ones who know how to connect the dots and bring the right people in.” 

That included gathering fire departments from around Minnesota through the state mutual aid program that staffed the Bemidji’s stations for the next 72 hours. This allowed

 Bemidji firefighters to tend to their own families and homes impacted by the storms, without fear that the larger community would suffer as a result. 

Ehret says the reason this response was so successful was because relationships were built long before between him and Chief Sherwood and among the Minnesota fire service as a whole. 

“People's emotions are high,” says Ehret. “If you don't have a relationship with somebody before, it becomes difficult when they're underneath tremendous amounts of stress.” 

Chief Sherwood agrees. 

“Relationship building is the key to being a fire chief,” said Chief Sherwood. “You quickly realize that you need to surround yourself with good people who have a lot of connections.” 

This time it was Bemidji that needed help, but next time it might be on the opposite end of the state. 

While SFM is always ready to step in, we can't do it alone. 

“The Minnesota fire service is really strong,” said Ehret. “If we don't have the answer, I'm sure somebody else in our state does.”