Among the major changes made by the Northfield Fire and Rescue Service over the past two years is the decision to not renew their ambulance license and move in a different direction.
Northfield Area Fire Chief Tom Nelson said there were many reasons the decision was made, not the least of which was that they have not transported someone to the hospital in decades. The Northfield Hospital Ambulance Service does all of the transporting, he said, but the fire and rescue service still has to file a report within four hours of a call whenever the ambulance leaves the station.
Having a piece of equipment like an ambulance is not the most cost-effective situation for NAFRS to be in, and Nelson said an ambulance probably isn’t even the right piece of equipment to own. Therefore, NAFRS is planning to sell the ambulance and purchase a light rescue vehicle.
The light rescue vehicle, for point of reference, he said, is the same piece of equipment operated by the characters Roy DeSoto and Johnny Gage on the 1970’s action-drama television series, Emergency. It will have much of the necessary equipment for treating injured people at a scene but does not have the ability to transport those people to a hospital. It also has the ability to be what Nelson called an “initial attack pumper” truck, and because it is so much smaller, it can get to places other fire engines cannot go.
“But this will just be a good tool in the toolbox for us to bring, both to fire and to rescue scenes, and it’s about half the cost of a brand-new pumper. So now we aren’t sending our brand new million-dollar engine into areas where you’re thinking, ‘Ohh is this going to rub? Are we going to fit? Are we going to hit something?’ So, it’ll be a good match.”
Meanwhile, the NAFRS ambulance is for sale at a time when an asset like that is in demand. All emergency vehicles are taking more than a year to arrive after they are ordered, but ambulances are taking more than two years. Not surprisingly, Nelson said, they might be able to keep the ambulance in Northfield.
“The resale value is really good, and the Northfield Hospital ambulance service is really interested in buying it. It’s the exact same ambulance that they just bought three of. It’s a couple of years older but it would really round out their fleet well and give them symmetry which is big for having your crews have something easy to operate.”
Nelson said they expect to have the ambulance sold as soon as this fall and are working on a spec and order for the new light rescue vehicle.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Northfield Area Fire Chief Tom Nelson can be heard here
New Rare Pair owners don’t want to ‘fix something that isn’t broken’
Krin Finger, who has owned The Rare Pair on the Corner of Division and 4th Streets in Downtown Northfield for 33 years, announced recently that she has sold the store to Beret Froehle and Krissy Neuger.
The Rare pair has been a favorite store of local Northfield shoppers and out-of-towners looking for top quality shoes and apparel at a reasonable price since the store was opened by Ellen Cox and Deb Bonhoff in 1977.
Froehle and Neuger were classmates at St. Olaf College, both graduating in 1999, before they actually met and became close friends. Froehle worked at the store while she was a student at St. Olaf. Both women got married and lived on the East Coast before settling back in Northfield. Froehle said as her husband was finishing his graduate work in Massachusetts, he asked her what she would like to do, to which she responded that she wanted to live in Northfield and work at the Rare Pair. The feeling for Finger and then-store manager Jill Enesvedt was mutual.
“When Beret came back, you know, we hadn’t seen much of her because she was off on the East Coast, starting her life and careers. When she came back, she stopped in to say hello and that she was thinking of moving back. And we all know Jill Enesvedt, who was my manager for 25 years. And we both said, ‘We’re going to go looking for houses for you, and do you want to come back and work at the Rare pair?’ Just like just a done deal.”
Neuger and her family came back to Northfield about seven years ago, and she was soon working at the store as well. Finger said she had been thinking about retiring for a while, but the conversation picked up in December. She came to an agreement with Froehle and Neuger and will retire at the end of the summer.
Froehle and Neuger do not intend to make any drastic changes right away. Finger has run the store extremely well for a long time, Neuger said, and for the time being the blueprint she has created will work just fine.
“We’re just going to take off running, right? It will be business as usual. We’re hoping to just kind of keep the heart of the store as is. We have some ideas for things we’d like to do in the future, but nothing imminent. You know, we don’t want to fix something that’s not broken.”
Both Froehle and Neuger said they are heading into the busiest months of the year, and simply creating window displays for the holidays that live up to Finger’s standards will be challenging enough.
Finger said she has great confidence in the new ownership team. In retirement, she said, she plans to spend more time with her grandchildren and hopes to do some traveling.
KYMN Daily News 7/29/24
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
