Hi, I’m Paul Darley. Thanks for tuning into our February issue of Inside Darley. I know we’ve all had it with the COVID talk, but it seems as if we, as a world and certainly in the United States as a country and the Midwest in particular, are moving from more of a pandemic to an endemic where it’s really becoming a question of when you’re going to get COVID as opposed to if you’re going to get COVID. And this is really supported by our first two articles that are attached here. The first one comes out of Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. It’s from back in July 2021. And then the second article had a very similar theme and was just in the Washington Post on January 20th. You might find those of interest to you.
We’ve been talking a lot about what is the implication of the implication when it comes to COVID and, we’re certainly seeing that with inflation and crazy stock market prices and our supply chain issues. Our third article that we’ve attached is a Deloitte article that relates to onshoring or reshoring. We, as a company here at Darley, are very proud that all of our manufacturing is done here in the United States. All of our suppliers are here in the United States, but this is putting pressure on us as larger companies who have historically used Asia for their offshoring are bringing that work back to the United States. It’s certainly creating a lot of supply chain issues and cost increases that all the rest of the manufacturers like Darley are dealing with.
If you are in the fire service, I think you should make sure to download this fourth document, which is the US Fire Service Needs Assessment Report. It only comes out every five years and it’s put out by the NFPA. It was just released in December of 2021, and it’s got some great information. The second report that we encourage you to take a look at is a report put out by FEMA; it’s called their National Preparedness Report. This was also just released, and it talks about 5.275 million COVID deaths around the world. It also talks a lot to changes in the last few years as they relate to natural disasters that are continuing to rise. In fact, just in 2021 alone, if you can imagine, there were 22 natural disasters that each cost over a billion dollars. Hopefully you can use these two articles.
If you’re in a fire service role, we’d really encourage you to participate in a new crowdsourcing event that we’re putting on about thought leadership within the fires service. We’re looking for ideas about fire company officers on experiences that they have and in ways that you’re seeing leaders inspire people within the fire service. We’re offering $5,000 for first place, $3,000 for second place and $1,000 for third place. You can apply on www.darley.com. You can also hear more about it on the Smart Firefighting podcast. The competition starts on February 7th and will end on April 30th. We hope you’ll participate.
Lastly, if you’re a fire service buff, we’d really encourage you to go to www.fama.org and order the 75th Anniversary book on FAMA. That’s the Fire Apparatus Manufacturers Association 75th Anniversary book. It’s really a great historic book.
Thanks for tuning into this issue of Inside Darley. If there’s anything we can be doing to support you, we hope you’ll reach out to us.
