Boone Co. Fire Protection District adds new traffic safety trainings and adjusts response procedures following 2021 death of Assistant Fire Chief
Olivia Hayes
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
In the four years since the death of Boone County Assistant Fire Chief Bryant Gladney, the Boone Co. Fire Protection District tells ABC 17 News its made changes to its training and response procedures.
Gladney was killed when a tractor-trailer slammed into his service SUV on Dec. 22, 2021 as Gladney was working at the scene of a crash. A crash report ABC 17 News obtained indicated the driver of the tractor-trailer broke rules about length of driving time when the crash happened.
Joey Rimel, a Boone County Lieutenant Paramedic, said all Boone Co. recruits are now required to take a traffic incident management course. He also said that all members of Boone Co. Fire got retrained this year on driving and operating the emergency vehicles.
Learning new things and promoting new ideas was a key part of Gladney’s message.
“They have no clue their students of Bryant, but most of our EMS program is made up of curriculum and content by Bryant,” Rimel said.
A message that continues to live on through the Bryant Gladney Foundation.
“Our family started after Brian’s death in 2021,” said Elizabeth Gladney, Outreach Director for the foundation and Gladney’s daughter-in-law. “We started out as just a scholarship and over the years, we’ve kind of just grown and expanded. So now our mission is to empower future generations of EMS providers to be exceptional caregivers.”
The fire district also implemented a HAAS system following Gladney’s death, a safety alert that caution’s drivers encountering emergency scenes, according to Boone Co. Assistant Fire Chief Gale Blomenkamp.
“It can deviate between northbound, southbound, eastbound, westbound. It won’t alert drivers on the wrong side of the road,” Blomenkamp said. “It’s a very smart system and it’s like a geofence around the incident.”
Shaun Gladney, Bryant Gladney’s son, is a first responder in the Dallas area and is no stranger to dangerous roadways. He tells ABC 17 News that distracted driving still remains a major safety hazard for first responders.
“In the DFW metroplex, I feel like we see a fire truck hit once a week,” Shaun said. “It is terrifying for us as first responders to be on the roadway and I am more scared of being on the road than I am going into a fire.”
Rimel described traffic management as a moving target. He explained its never the same due to factors like road construction or where a response is needed at. Road changes like the I-70 improvement project have brought a unique set of new and ongoing challenges to the fire district, according to Rimel.
“We’re gonna have a lot more accidents that are still in the center of the interstate, which are harder to mitigate and protect our people from,” Rimel said.
Rimel expressed the importance and renewed focus of limiting the road exposure of first responders when responding to a crash, especially on the highway.
“If it’s a non-injury and the vehicles can move, let’s get them off the roads, get them off the interstate, let’s get them to a safe location,” Rimel said. “It’s not just a risk for us. It’s a risk for everybody else that has to be there, even the motorist driving on the highway.”
Blomenkamp said the fire district is looking into special signage and portable light units to promote a safer response for Boone Co. first responders no matter the time of day. Special barriers for highway and road emergency responses called attenuators were being explored, but Blomenkamp said that the barriers were found to not be the best or safest option to protect the first responders.
“Those were really originally designed to protect the motoring public, not the workers,” Blomenkamp said.
Shaun Gladney said there is also a need for better public awareness and knowledge on the roads.
“I think people just like don’t really know how to act when first responders are around or they panic,” Shaun said.
Shaun and his wife Elizabeth are planning to continue expanding the Bryant Gladney Foundation. Outside of scholarships, the foundation also promotes continued education to active first responders through its All-Star EMS Conference and webinar videos that highlight Bryant Gladney’s teachings.
Since the Fall of 2022, the foundation has awarded $42,000 in scholarships to 31 paramedic students from 21 different paramedic programs in 17 different states. Eight of those scholarship recipients were students at the University of Missouri or Boone Co. Fire. The foundation has received applications from 42 out of 50 states. In the spring, it will award five more scholarships totaling $7,500.