Fire Fighter III Jason J. Samala

Fire Fighter (FF) III Jason Samala was named Department Employee of the Year for his contributions to the Department and the community.   On his off-duty days while at home being "Mr. Mom" to his three very young children, FF Samala developed and wrote a software program to manage the manpower needs in his battalion.  This program also included an electronic personal record of the battalion's employees and the certifications that they attained.  An added feature of this program provides an advanced pop-up warning of any certification that is due to expire.

The development of this program simplified the method that was in use to manage personnel.  Besides being totally electronic, which allows records to be easily transferred with personnel upon reassignment or promotion, it is also able to track vacation and sick leaves, training, classes, or other reasons that personnel are away from their assignments.

The program allows the BC, as Incident Commander, to accurately track personnel at an incident, which provides increased safety and accountability.  It also has a report feature that can query multiple employee records such as vacation used, temporary assignments, overtime hours, and training attended.