{"id":1548,"date":"2019-08-21T12:26:49","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T16:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=1548"},"modified":"2019-08-21T12:26:59","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T16:26:59","slug":"newly-appointed-fire-chief-vows-to-improve-polk-county-fire-rescue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/08\/21\/newly-appointed-fire-chief-vows-to-improve-polk-county-fire-rescue\/","title":{"rendered":"Newly-appointed Fire Chief vows to improve Polk County Fire Rescue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/05_08_bn9_robertweechpolkjpg.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1549\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/05_08_bn9_robertweechpolkjpg.jpg?w=2000&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/05_08_bn9_robertweechpolkjpg.jpg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/05_08_bn9_robertweechpolkjpg.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/05_08_bn9_robertweechpolkjpg.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Polk County began a new chapter Tuesday as commissioners\nunanimously approved the appointment of Robert Weech as chief of Polk County\nFire Rescue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt feels different, I can tell you that. When I went to bed\nlast night, I felt like \u2018Ok, tomorrow, I\u2019ll wake up as fire chief,\u201d said Chief\nWeech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Robert Weech has been serving as interim chief since May,\nwhen then-Chief Tony Stravino stepped down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This followed an explosive investigation&nbsp;that uncovered\nwhat went wrong the November night when Lorretta Pickard died inside her\nburning home in Lakeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Polk County Fire Rescue responders never made entry into her\nhome. Pickard remained on the phone with a 911 dispatcher for 12 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Captain James Williams resigned in March after violating\npolicy for a video he shared on social media from the deadly fire in November.\nWilliams was under investigation for allegedly lying under oath about taking\nprevious videos at fire scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chief Tony Stravino announced his retirement in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat is a milestone, a marker in Polk County Fire Rescue.\nWe certainly send our condolences to the whole family. That certainly comes\nfrom me and the whole team. We use it as a learning experience. We\u2019ll commit to\ngetting better,\u201d said Weech on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Weech has vowed to take the 650-member Polk County Fire\nRescue in a new direction, starting with better training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m in the process now of rebuilding that training division\nwith a new focus and that focus is the development of our people,\u201d he said.\n\u201cIt\u2019s no secret we have a fairly young workforce. It\u2019s a very dedicated, very\ncommitted high energy workforce and we\u2019re proud of them but they are young.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chief Weech previously laid out millions of dollars in\nrecommendations from a consultant on what the county can do to improve public\nsafety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They include 5,000 hours of training for captains, battalion\nchiefs and officer candidates and an annual 40-hour officer development class.\nThat class carries a yearly cost of $300,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The consultant also recommends building a training facility\nthat could cost $10 million\u2013$25 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe take those seriously. We\u2019re committed to them. We put a\nlot of those in play and we\u2019ll continue to move down that road for constant\nhigh performance,\u201d Weech said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The county came to a $200,000 settlement with the Pickard\nestate in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Polk County began a new chapter Tuesday as commissioners unanimously approved the appointment of Robert Weech as chief of Polk County Fire Rescue. \u201cIt feels different, I can tell you&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}