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What does your chief do for your fire company?
I've had alot of chiefs in my time in the first service. Never served under my uncle who was our 2nd chief and served for 25 years. I asked him once why he stepped down. He said it was time and the company needed new leadership. I missed by a year serving under his successor who passed away of a heart attack before I joined. I didn't even know the first chief who later became a very good chief and one of my best friends.
He along with another chief got us to run with other companies. Being a small minority company we had to prove ourselves. Many a time a chief would call fireboard and ask why we weren't on a run or didn't get called. Chief Trotter and Saunders got us on cover ups which lead to more runs once people got to know us. I wrote before about us having covered over 35 different companies in DEL, MD, NJ and PA. Some for parades alot for actual fires. I think we're at 38 right now.
We've had bad chiefs who basically just walked around with a radio. One chief was so unrespected that other chiefs would only go to the deputy or myself (capt at the time) for issues in the fire coimpany.
Some wanted to be chief because we were getting a new engine and wanted to take credit.
Chief Aiken took us to another level. More training and better equipment. It was good to get on the engine and not worry about who was on. Many volunteers know the feeling. I got 5 FF's but can only depend on 2 or 3 to REALLY get the job done. We were hanging out everyday, having BBQ's on the weekends. It felt good to get 2 engines out with full crews when many companies had trouble getting one out.
What does your chief do for the fire company? What should your chief do for your fire company? What do you look for in a chief?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Fabulous Heather Days of Summer on
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I am lucky and have always served under good chiefs, even alongside neighboring departments with good Chiefs.
A few most profound things that my chiefs have done:
* monitor the emotional well-being of the department members and their families, such as on-scene recognizing a particular call may be or is really hard on a particular member and finding a way to address that matter, whether it was to relieve that FF from that call or to partner them with someone who had a clue of the significance of that particular call (such as FF Dan has a 2-year old son, and we are searching for a missing 2-yr old boy... which has the potential to add stress to Dan)
* deal with the city council and their endless list of demands, and their total lack of true understanding of the fire service and the individual needs of each FD
* my chiefs mentored the members to care for each other - such as, everytime I was on scene with a extreme trauma, especially death, my chief, and usually several other officers/FFs would check in with me (and on each other) to say are you ok, how you doing with this [when I was new on the dept, this would happen almost every call... and I stayed 10 yrs, before moving out of State, so something they did was right]
* all of my chiefs have had an open home policy - whatever time day or night, we could call them at home or drop by their home for any reason [I also saw that they encouraged this family behavior in all their chosen officers and wanted open communication in all of their FFs} [this included any topic - family, marriage, divorce, parenting, school, work, or FD stuff, including verbal processing of the emotional stressors of some gruesome scenes]
* my chiefs demonstrated consistent and amplified appreciation of the FD Auxiliary who endlessly served and supported the FD, on several large calls where the Auxiliary members spent the better part of the call with us on scene - 15+ hours even - our chiefs would walk around and remind us to thank tha Auxiliary personally
* my chiefs worked very hard to have good relations with the neighboring departments, even swallowing their pride often, just to keep the relationships strong for the betterment of the community. They always advised us members to not fight with the other departments personnel, instead bring concerns to them and they would handle any collective matters
* my chiefs always helped their neighboring departments and if we would be strapped for coverage, they would just request 5-6 guys stay behind in town, and then advise the requesting town how many trucks and staff would be coming to help
* my chiefs pushed for development and improvement of the fire/ems service, including being active at the State levels to improve policies, trainings, and service coordination and competency
* my chiefs pushed the members to help each other - they would regularly check in with me on my progress in fire/ems school, and would ask if I needed extra help in any area, and as needed would appoint seasoned member to help me (and others) with specific skill sets, and push the members to help instead of criticize and to teach and coach instead of belittle and torment
* my chiefs were keenly aware of personal stressors in my life, such as one day, I was in an auto-accident in a neighboring town, the accident happened to be on the front page of the newspaper that evening (doh!) which my chief saw. He called to check on me - every single day until I returned to the FD - and he called my FF husband and told him to also take a few weeks off to stay home and take care of me
... to name a few things, my chiefs worked hard at...
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for the most part... but don't get me wrong... there were days that they pissed me off too... LOL
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Permalink Reply by ashfire on
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I guess in our dept we have had chiefs that would change the way the dept was running. The chief we have now alot of people have felt he is out to get rid of the volunteer members and replace them with all career. He had been a chief of our dept when he was younger and then joined the career dept when it was formed. He retired from the career side of the county dept as a Assit Chief and came in to replace the current vol chief at the time because of some incidents. Next thing members were leaving left and right because he would go face to face with some members and tell them to straighten out their act or leave. We had some roguish members who did things unbecoming of the dept. Some he told to get a job and alot of them joined career depts around our area or within the county and left their vol days behind unless they moved to another area where they didn't have to deal with a career dept.
Lately we have been finding out problems in our administration side that almost put us in court, bankrupt and close down our vol dept because things were not followed up or being done in a timely fashion. We had to elected new officers to correct that. Someone was blaming the chief or saying he was going to use all our money up but they had all our records so screwed up we felt they were covering up their wrong doings.
Things are starting to move forward and more problems are going away. If we get more members then we may solve personnel needs when county responses overwhelm county sources for calls. We have not had anwswer up or extra crews in sometime because alot of members have had to work extra jobs to make a living or live outside the area of the dept.
Now we have worked under chiefs who pushed members to take classes and improve their ideas of firefighting and life but they have moved on to other places and positions.
Some have past away and left their marks in the dept.
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I will say we need to do some community relations because we have not done any in years like we did under one chief. We were setting up displays and putting on demostrations in shopping centers in our response area and making more contact with people.
Our chief is not much of a public person so its up to the adminstrative side to push for such things.
All we got was putting on parties for kids with no safety learning involved under the past administrative group.
We may try to get a Fire Corp or CERT group started that could help the dept with our public relations.
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Permalink Reply by Moose on
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In our neck of the woods, we are an all volunteer county with 17 departments, and I would say I can count on one hand all of the chiefs that I respect.
In my area its easy to become chief, you just need the right last name or be in the clique and be popular. Its not an election here, its a popularity contest. Members do not look at training and experience and what the new chief can do for the department, its all about what the chief will allow the clique to get away with.
There was a chief in a mutual aid department of mine that I respected 110%, if he gave me an order at a fire I followed it and never questioned or doubted the order, if I had a question about fires or training or anything with the fire service I went to him first before my own chief. Unfortunately he moved to Texas (Unfortunate for us but fortunate for Texas!) I still try to keep in touch with him.
In my current dept I respect my chief completely, even though she only has about 10 years of fire service experience. She is a great balanced chief that commands at calls and also makes sure we are safe and healthy and happy in both the department and our home lives. She is active in everything in the county and spends all of her time at meetings! Town meeting, county meeting, our fire meeting, commisioner meeting, chiefs meeting, EMS meeting...She's getting sick of meetings!! But she goes to make sure we are getting what we need as a dept and that we are known to the public when we do a good job, and never takes credit for anything. She always passes credit where credit is due. She is a good chief and will someday be a GREAT chief.
Im Captain now and serve under 3 chiefs, the chief herself and two assistants. The first assistant is decent, when he shows up. He spends most of his time riding bike and touring the country. The second assistant does not even want to be there, but he took it so that another trouble maker couldnt get it and make things miserable in the dept, so I give him credit for thinking of the department and taking the position until someone else can be eligible, he knows the trucks and works them all well and never has a problem getting us water.
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Permalink Reply by capcityff on
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Screws us over, changes the name of our department, changes our uniforms, ruins tradition, and dismantles some of the best companies in the city.
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