[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jackie Broach, and this is First Friday with Georgetown county. Today is November 1st, and in honor of the month of Thanksgiving, we have a very special guest today, Ashley Nelson with the Bonnell Foundation.
Ashley, we have asked you here to talk with us a little about some of the nonprofits in Georgetown county because this, of course, is a time of year when lots of people are looking to do charitable giving.
You, being with the Bonnell foundation, are an expert on all of the nonprofits in Georgetown County. So for anybody who doesn't know, start off by telling us a little bit about what the Banell foundation is and does.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Sure. So the Bonnell foundation was founded in the year 2000 with the focus to improve the quality of life for all of Georgetown county residents. So we do that through five focus areas. Addressing the root causes of poverty, meeting basic human needs, preserving the environment, promoting economic vitality, and promoting positive youth development. So we serve the nonprofit community a number of ways through grant funding, which most people know us for. But we also do a number of capacity building initiatives with our nonprofits. We do quarterly trainings for the nonprofit community. We often convene the nonprofit and for profit community. And we're probably known a lot in this community as the host of Palmetto Giving Day, which is an online fundraising event for our nonprofit community that has raised over $13 million over the past eight years.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: I think of you guys as sort of a nonprofit for nonprofits.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Well, that's a good way to. Well, we are nonprofits, so, yeah, that's a good way to name it.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: So talk to me about how people can give back to their community this month that they're looking for ways to help out.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: So there are a number of ways that people can give back to their community.
Thanksgiving is the time of giving, and a lot of nonprofits in the community have Thanksgiving food drives where they give food to our community that might be less fortunate. Some that come to mind are the basketball food pantry, Helping hands of Georgetown, and caring and sharing. I learned at the county council meeting last week that food insecurity numbers continue to spike in our community.
It's projected that food insecurity is going to spike at least 20% next year. So any opportunities, whether it's doing a food donation drive at your church or at the company that you work for, or even for students that might be listening or watching at your schools to help our nonprofits that are serving those that have food insecurity, there's always a need for volunteers, whether it's with an after school Program, it's with those working in literacy, those that are helping the elderly. Even our animal shelters, there's always a need for volunteers. So I'm certain that our nonprofit community would be grateful to have members of our community help support through volunteerism as well.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: I'm really glad you mentioned the county council meeting, because for several years, I want to say we started right around the pandemic. At every county council meeting, we begin with a nonprofit spotlight, where the county and the Bonnell foundation partner to highlight a nonprofit that the Bonnell foundation works with. I've lived here since 2006, and there are still agencies that I had never heard of, and they're doing so much good in our community.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: So. So I think it's just great that we've started that partnership and kind of shine a light on some of the people who are doing such good work here.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: And it's a great way to start the meeting on a light note. It is to acknowledge the work that's being done, shed awareness, and hopefully gain some traction for those organizations also.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Yeah, from animal shelters, the things that people think about, like the ones that provide housing for people who are undergoing cancer treatment, things like that, to the period project, things that people just wouldn't think about. So about how many nonprofits would you say that the Pinnell foundation works with?
[00:04:18] Speaker B: On average, about 85. Now, Palmetto giving day, we typically serve about 80 to 90 organizations, but all of those organizations aren't necessarily grantees of the foundation, and it's not a requirement to be a grantee of the foundation to participate in Palmetto Giving Day. So there's a pocket of about 85 giving day participants. There's participants and there's some overlap because quite a few of our grantees are in Giving Day. But on average, I would say our grantee list is about 90 organizations.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: So if, say, somebody is new here and they're looking to find an organization that they want to volunteer for or give to, do you have any advice for how to go about selecting one with so many worthwhile agencies out there?
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Sure. So on our website, bonnell.org that's bu&e l l e.org we actually have a nonprofit directory. Now, the directory is inclusive of organizations that we fund, and there again is about 85 to 90 organizations. I would guess there are probably 20 or 30 more in our community, but that's a good place to start. On the website, it does show in the directory where the nonprofit's located. Some of the nonprofits have even provided us with wish Lists for things that they may need for their organization. And it gives you the overview of the organization, their mission statement, and website to see if what their their mission is meets the needs and interests of those willing or wanting to volunteer.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: I refer people to your nonprofit directory all the time. We get lots of inquiries from people looking for volunteer opportunities and such. It really is a great resource for our community. So thank you for coming on and talking about that. Is there anything else you can think of that you would like to say about our nonprofits?
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Well, they're amongst my favorite group of people. The nonprofits do invaluable work in our community. A lot of times that work may be overlooked, but they are a vital part of our community and can always use the support, whether it's volunteer support, financial support, or even communicating the work that they do. So I would certainly encourage, again, our website as a means to start to find out about the nonprofit community and find something that interests you and reach out to the organization to see how you might be able to be a part of the work that they're doing in our community.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: That, again, is vanelle.org b u n n e l l e.org it really is a great resource. Ashley, thank you so much for taking the time to come and talk with us today. Absolutely.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Thank you for inviting me.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Happy Thanksgiving.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Same to you.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Our next guest is Battalion Chief Pete Copeland of Midway Fire Rescue. Pete, we recently got recognized statewide for something that you and safety committee over at Midway did. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
[00:06:59] Speaker C: Yes. So what we did was we revamped our ability test. We have to do an ability test to make sure we're in shape and able to do the job. We do this ability test twice a year. If you go off on injury leave, you have to complete disability tests to show that you are able to come back to work. As we were looking at the ability test, we noticed that it was way outdated. We were doing some things that.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: When you say we, you mean all of the firefighters at Midway. Is it also county fire? Is it county wide?
[00:07:35] Speaker C: No, this one was just with Midway Fire Rescue and the safety committee. We have a committee that does all of our safety reports, does our investigations, and tries to figure out how can we prevent loss, injuries, illnesses, accidents, and that kind of stuff.
And it came out that the stuff that we were doing as we were going back and looking at some of the incidents and the reports were we were getting hurt doing this ability test.
So after that's no good.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: That definitely sounds like the opposite of.
[00:08:05] Speaker C: What we want, not good at all. So we started looking and unfortunately I was one that was injured from repetitive motion of doing this twice a year for 20 years. And we were just doing some motions that were wrong. So they asked the chief, hey, can we revamp this and make it more user friendly for Midway Fire Rescue? We don't need to do what New York City does. We don't need to do what Charleston does. We need something that shows our abilities, what we're asked to do every day.
So it took a lot of work, a lot of planning. I think it was over a year the process took.
So. And these guys didn't get compensated for this. This was all on their own time. We had a budget of zero. So everything that they did to make this test came from the firehouse and what we have on, on site.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: So it was all now. So people aren't confused. It sounds like you just made it easier for you guys to do, right?
[00:09:02] Speaker C: We did not. It's actually harder.
We went back to the standards, the NFPA standards, and we actually made more stations than we had before. So there's more stations you have to complete in the time frame.
So it's actually more difficult.
And so we wanted it to be more difficult, but we also wanted it to be. We didn't want it to be punitive.
So if you don't pass the test in the allotted time, we now have steps to take that we will get you to where you need to be to pass the test, whether it's, you know, you're coming off an injury and you've been sitting on the couch for two months and now you're going to come back to work and we say you got to go structured fire. Right now, are you physically ready because you were on the couch for so long recovering. So now we can go to the ability test, see where your weaknesses are. And then we assign you to a. A personal trainer and a coach that gets you where you need to be, not in the gym, but in the job. So we want to get you back to the job.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: So the idea of this test is to kind of replicate what y'all will actually be doing in the field, correct?
[00:10:19] Speaker C: Yes. They are actual skills that we do in the field.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: So I. To me, it sounds kind of like the difference between getting ready for standardized. Getting ready for a standardized test and getting ready for, I don't know, job training or something like that.
[00:10:32] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: In the field.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: It's in the field stuff and it's stuff that we do. What is, what does the community ask us to do.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: So what do the things that you're asked to do in this test kind of look like?
[00:10:43] Speaker C: All right, so, like, how we start out where we pull a hose line to a front door, and then we'll get at the front door, and then we have to force that door. We have a door prop where they have to actually force the door open and break the door to gain access into the building.
Then they have to obviously put their mask on just like they would advance into the building. They have to climb through holes.
A lot of times.
Some people can't make it through the clearances that we may have. So another skill is taking our air packs off, pushing it through the hole, putting it back on. When we get on the other side, we do all that. We go upstairs, we do some hose on our shoulder. We go upstairs, downstairs, do a bunch of stairs.
We will take a pole, and we will push up like we're breaching a ceiling. We will pull down like we're breaching the ceiling. And then in between, we gotta have what they call walking stations.
Kind of get you back where you need to go. And then we do a sled. Push, pull. We got a sled that was donated by the community, so we can push the sled a distance, pull it back, raise a ladder, lower a ladder and all that stuff in full protective gear and breathing air.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:58] Speaker D: So.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: So the recognition we got was from the South Carolina association of counties. It seems like they were fairly impressed with this initiative. What kind of feedback are you getting from the firefighters who are actually taking this test?
[00:12:12] Speaker C: Well, the feedback started during the process as we were developing this. We had to test and validate what we were doing. So we took five members from the previous test. We took the fastest time, the slowest time, A male, a female, and the oldest person on the department. And they got the test to do run through the test, and we made some adjustments after that, but they also got to take the survey. What did they like? What didn't they like? Did they think it was too hard? Did they think it was too easy? Was it harder than the last one? So they had really, really good feedback for us. And then once we got it done again, and we moved some things around, we had to test and validate it again. So we asked those same people, hey, we can't pay you to do this, but we'd like you to participate. Absolutely, 100%. Nobody batted an eye. We'd love to get this test. So they did it again.
So we got that all put together.
And the first time we ran it was in May for the department and everybody enjoyed it more because it was more job related duties than just something that somebody made up 20 years ago.
They thought it was more applicable for what we do on a day to day basis. But we're getting really, really good feedback. We're going to do another test. Our second test of the year is in November. So everybody on the department will go through it again and I'm sure, hopefully I'll get the same feedback. But yeah, it was interesting how positive everybody was because they saw it as a step forward. You know, hey, we're doing this for you guys. We're doing this for our department. What do we do on a daily basis? So they thought that was really good.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: Well, it sounds great. Are there any plans to kind of expand it to other departments?
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Yes, we have reached out to obviously, Georgetown County Fire and ems.
I'm not sure if the fire chief talked to the city fire yet. We reached out to the sheriff's office. You know, hey, if you guys need help doing some of this kind of stuff, we can, we can help you and kind of guide you in the way that you want it to be done. Because what our job isn't what their job is. How do you want your ability test set up? What kind of ideas did we do? Did we have that, oh man, I don't have a budget, so what do we use? That kind of stuff. We have reached out, we've gotten some feedback. So whenever and if anybody's interested. Absolutely, we will.
Probably won't be me, be one of the safety team coming over and helping you out and guiding you and helping you in the ways that we did. Because there was a lot of trial and error on our end. I mean, it was over a year of trying things and discussions, arguments. I mean, you get a couple firefighters in the room and everybody has the right idea.
[00:15:01] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Well, in addition to the statewide recognition, the team from Midway Safety Committee also received the county's innovation award at a county council meeting a couple months back. So this is really getting attention from a lot of people in leadership positions.
[00:15:19] Speaker C: It is. And I was surprised when they said that we were in the running for the award for the counties.
All the counties in South Carolina put in for this award and we were recognized. That's, that's humongous for this, us in the state. That's wonderful. Yeah. So that's a great accomplishment to, to beat everybody else. You know what I mean?
[00:15:40] Speaker A: It's nice when hard work pays off.
[00:15:42] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Well, Pete, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for all that you do for our community.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: Thanks.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Continuing with some of our public safety discussions, we have another team member from Midway here, Chief Brent McClelland and John Prevatt from the Georgetown County Sheriff's Office. We are going to be talking about drones today. So I hear that we are doing a lot more with these tools in our public safety operations today. Can you all talk with me a.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Little bit about that?
[00:16:13] Speaker E: Sure. I'll start. We a couple of years ago started adding the drone to both our missing persons. Swimmers in distress, boat calls, we found missing kayakers. The drone just opens up so many more avenues for us working in conjunction with the sheriff's office. I know on the last three of our missing swimmers, we've both worked in conjunction, talking with each other because you don't want to fly two drones in the same airspace. Really, really close. So we take turns and they're all battery, battery powered. So usually after our battery life's down, if we land ours, they'll take back off. Also, Merle's Inlet fire has been very big and helpful with theirs as well. But it's opened up so many more avenues. The coast guard helicopter, 45 minutes sometimes getting into our area. So the quicker we can get these drones up, it just gives us another eye from the sky to where we' actually helping to locate missing persons quicker.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: And some of them have like heat sensing technology and stuff as well, is that right?
[00:17:17] Speaker D: Some of them do. Not all of them. This one is more of an indoor version right here that doesn't have any kind of thermal capabilities, but we do have a larger one that's an outdoor drone that does have thermal capabilities to it.
But like the chief was saying, we've pretty much gotten to where we work in conjunction with each other and we can fly different zones. One of the more recent ones over the summer, we were looking for a missing swimmer.
Midway was in one area. We were a little bit south of them. And then Roselling, Garden City was north of us. And it just allowed us to cover a lot of ground in a very short amount of time and spike enough batteries. We can kind of keep. We keep drones in there for a good little while.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I imagine when you have something like a swimmer in distress, you know, every second counts. So not having to wait for somebody to be able to arrive, I mean, that can be life and death.
[00:18:04] Speaker E: Absolutely. And both ocean and the river. And then like we said, missing missing persons in the woods, you know, with that FLIR option on there. And the other cool thing that we have is we're able to, if we do locate someone that's missing, that we need help getting into their area. We can also talk to them, communicate with them, let them know the helps on the way, hold tight, don't try to go any further or any deeper and we can have that communication. Plus it helps with lighting. We got spotlight on it. So well worth the money that we spend on them for these tools.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Do we want to talk about how much these tools cost? They're expensive but worth it. It sounds like.
[00:18:42] Speaker E: Absolutely, absolutely.
Another option that I know we use and I'm sure they've used theirs for training as well. We can pre plan buildings with them. We can go out, we can do training missions to where we, even in the event of a large fire, we can use that drone to go over and tell where our hotspots are without having to send a person. And we can tell and then radio to our battalion chiefs as they're commanding the incident, where the hotspots are and where we need to focus our attention. So that, that's been a big help and again just with, with everyday general training missions and it's invaluable. It is really great tool.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Anything to add?
[00:19:24] Speaker D: Obviously our mission sets a little bit differently.
So this drone is an indoor drone and we can use it to put inside of a building to avoid putting a person inside a building if it's a high risk situation or something of that nature.
This is a first person view. So look through the goggles basically like flying VR and we can use it to clear certain structures and stuff like that depending upon what the mission set is.
But yeah, I mean they're well worth the money as far as things we can do with them and kind of avoiding risk in this situation.
The, the advantages like are just so great. With using a drone, we can get up in the sky, we can cover so much more ground than it would take for one officer to be able to do it in a car or by foot or something of that nature.
Whenever we're doing like a swimmer distress or something like that, you can get up 400ft in there, you can see so far that I mean it's just amazing in comparison to what we would be on top of a boat or even on the shoreline or something like that.
We can do crime scenes, something of that nature. We just need to hover up and get like an overall view and just kind of span down. We can do so many different things with them.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: So with the VR whims the goggles. It sounds like you could, you know, kind of use it to go into a building or something instead of sending an officer into a dangerous situation.
[00:20:49] Speaker D: Yes, ma'am. Yeah. In certain situations that's what we would do.
In certain situations, yes. Basically we can send it in and just be eyes in front of us kind of deal. If we're clearing a building, say it's with the SWAT team or something of that nature, we can send this and you know, while it is money, it's not a person. It's not like we're sending somebody through a door first. It could be going into a situation where it's a deadly force thing. If we can kind of mitigate some of the liabilities, some of the risk using this drone, it's well worth it.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Obviously, we can't put a price on a life.
[00:21:20] Speaker D: It'd be hard to. It'd be hard to.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: So whatever it costs, you know, if it's, it's saving a firefighter's life or an officer's life, that certainly is a worthwhile investment. So what kind of training do y'all have to go through to be able to utilize these tools?
[00:21:34] Speaker E: It's a pretty extensive training. They are licensed operators, they have to go through the faa, they do weather checks. Just same as any other pilot would with an aircraft. You have to get clearance.
As far as the schooling itself, I think you all went for two weeks.
[00:21:52] Speaker D: We do a one week 40 hour course. After that we tested our part 107B through the FAA and same as the fire department, we have to be licensed to operate over the sheriff's office. Currently there's three of us that are licensed.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: That was my next question. How many do you guys have who were able to operate?
All right, great. So I imagine that like most technology, these probably advance and change pretty quickly.
[00:22:19] Speaker D: Oh yeah.
And everything changes. Camera changes, their capabilities change. Battery is a big thing. Software, if we're not staying up to date and training with them and operating these things not necessarily on a daily basis, but at least on a monthly basis, software will get backed up and it just takes so long. If we are having to respond to something, some emergent need, we're going to have to just stop, sit down, get everything up to date and then do it. So it's a constant thing that we're training on these guys.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Well, this is pretty interesting. I mean, these are not what you would normally think of at the top of the list of tools that law enforcement and fire rescue are using, but it sounds like they're becoming pretty. Pretty vital.
[00:23:00] Speaker E: Absolutely. And the other neat thing about minus, even without the VR one, the one we have the in the command vehicle or actually in chief's middle's vehicle for us, is I can be looking at the screen, monitoring it, helping him while he's looking at a smaller screen watching the drone. So there's, there's two eyes on everything. So instead of us being two feet up on a jet ski looking and with waves crashing in without visibility now, like John said, We're at 400ft, we've got clear visibility, but there's more than one person that's got those eyes on it. So it is just a that great tool.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Okay, great. What else can you guys tell me?
[00:23:37] Speaker D: So kind of piggybacking off of that. We're actually, we're in the beginning stages of outfit our drones with a software to where we'll be able to ship it out to our guys. We've got say half a dozen guys on call using a swimmer distress or something of that nature with our other drone. If I view it, I can then ship it out and everybody can get a live feed on their phone via app. We can get latitude, longitude, coordinates. Just send somebody directly to them. They can see exactly what everybody else is seeing, which is a pretty cool thing. Hopefully we're rolling out here in the next month or two.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Great.
So I know that we have also used these around storms before and after hurricanes to kind of gauge the damage on the coast that can be done by these storms. So it sounds like there are just a lot of applications for virtual technology and growing.
[00:24:30] Speaker D: Seems like every day there's there's some other request or something that somebody was like, can we do this? Is this an idea? There's something that we can do.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Anything else?
[00:24:40] Speaker D: Good things about it.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for. For sharing these great tools with us and telling us a little bit about how they help our presidents. I appreciate it.
[00:24:51] Speaker D: Thanks, ma'am.
[00:24:51] Speaker E: Thank you.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: That's it for this month's episode of First Friday with Georgetown County. Thank you for listening. As always. I'd like to end with some events happening in the next few weeks.
Today and tomorrow, a crafting fair will take place at the Waccama Library from 10am to 5pm early voting continues today and tomorrow at four locations across the county. Hours are 18:30am to 6pm Tuesday, November 5th is election day. All polls will be open. Hours are 7am to 7pm Find more
[email protected] Vote on November 4th at 5pm A public hearing will take place at the Waccamaw Regional Council of Government's office in Georgetown.
This meeting is regarding the county's hazard mitigation plan. Learn
[email protected] GCEMD On November 7th, the Georgetown County Library will have a grand reopening ceremony at the newly renovated main Branch in Georgetown. The event starts at 10am November 11th is Veterans Day. County offices and facilities will be closed and we like to take a moment to thank all of our local veterans. Check out the Georgetown County Veterans Services page on Facebook for Veterans Day events and activities.
County Council only meets once this month. The meeting will take place Nov. 12 at 5:30pm in the historic courthouse on Screven Street.
The following day, November 13th, Georgetown county will open three new kids trails that will be added to the Georgetown Outdoor Adventure Trails Program.
The ribbon cutting will begin at 11am at Rocky Point Community Forest. All are welcome to attend.
The Georgetown County Planning commission will meet Nov. 21 at 5:30pm at the historic Courthouse. County offices are closed for Thanksgiving on November 28th and 29th. I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. Join us again next month.
