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Health & Fitness

Fire Indemnification Bill Signed Into Law!

Volunteer Firemen, Ambulance Service Personnel, and Fire Police Patrol Officers will now be protected and indemnified in Connecticut.

P.A. 11-243 AN ACT CONCERNING IMMUNITY FROM LIABILITY FOR FIRE POLICE OFFICERS, PROPERTY TAX RELIEF FOR VOLUNTEER FIRE POLICE OFFICERS AND UNDERWATER SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAMS AND THE APPROVAL OF REGIONAL FIRE SCHOOLS

This Act has various effective dates.  Refer to text of bill.

On Thursday Gov. Dannel Malloy signed a bill into law that I introduced back in January. This bill, HB 5489, accomplished two major goals: It put volunteer firemen and ambulance service personnel on par with the paid employees of the 169 municipalites in Connecticut in that they will be protected from liability in the course of their duties protecting the public; and it added Fire Police Patrol Officers to the list of those to be protected and indemnified. 

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What better way to protect those that protect us than to guaranty that they will not be financially hurt should someone sue a town and all those at a fire, flood, or accident scene. These volunteers save us millions of dollars a year as well as risk life and limb to protect our citizens

In Greenwich alone, we have had a few situations where people at fault sued everyone working on behalf of the town, both paid and non-paid, and in those cases the town did the right thing. However, when they did not want to write a letter confirming and guaranteeing intentions to protect and indemnify the volunteers, Cos Cob Fire Police Patrol President Joe Kaliko asked me to work on legislation (also recommended by then CT Attorney General Blumenthal ) to correct this. Joe Kaliko did an amazing job all through the process and was a tireless advocate for every volunteer in the State of Connecticut.

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I also want to tip my cap to CCFPP Chief Brian Kelly, Peter Sachs, the well over 40 co-sponsors who agreed to support this very important bill, and of course, Gov. Dannel Malloy for signing it. 

What better tool for municipalities to have for volunteer recruitment and retention than to let the men and women serving us know that we will have their back should something terrible happen while they are in the line of duty?

It was an honor to work on this legislation the past year and a half. I am proud of it being passed into law, and grateful that Connecticut has publically acknowledged how valuable these citizens are to our towns and cities.

This new law gives Connecticut one of the strongest, if not the strongest, volunteer emergency service worker protection law in the nation.

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