At Monday night’s meeting, Cordell City Council voted to employ Mike Morel as EMS Director and Seth Slaughterback as Fire Chief for the newly restructured combined Fire and EMS Department. Both Morel and Slaughterback had been serving as interim leaders while details of the changes within the department were being solidified.
The new city ordinance that outlines the changes reads, in part, ‘the City Council finds that consolidating the City’s fire protection and emergency medical service functions into a single Combination Fire & EMS Department will improve accountability, stabilize staffing, preserve ambulance readiness, and protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public.’
Under the new structure, employees will have both EMT and Firefighter certifications so that they may move between duties as needed. Those on the staff that do not have those certifications have been given a time frame to become certified.
Also regulated by the new ordinance is the necessity of a volunteer being able to report to the fire station within ten minutes of being paged, unless exceptions have been approved by the Fire Chief.