Chief Myer's Photo by M.J. Stafford
News article posted in the Jamestown Post Journal:
FREDONIA — A recent interview with Fredonia’s new fire chief, Joshua Myers, began in the Fredonia Fire Department museum, next to its centerpiece hand-drawn hose cart from 1886.
It was a fitting juxtaposition of old and new for a man who has deep respect for the department’s traditions, but also brings his own ideas to the Fredonia truck bays.
Myers started his firefighting career by joining an Albany-area volunteer fire department in 2006. “I really took a liking to it,” he said. “I enjoyed it, I loved the training, the brotherhood and sisterhood.”
He then decided to join the Air Force as a firefighter. “I just really fell in love with the career. Not only all the cool stuff everyone sees, the calls and the fire trucks, but just everything else — the training, the morale, the cohesiveness of bring a part of something like that and helping people.”
He had various positions and ranks while deployed in the Air Force, then relocated to the Buffalo area in 2012. He took a position with the West Seneca volunteer fire department and climbed the ranks there all the way to chief.
Myers is chief of two departments right now: he plans on finishing out the year in West Seneca “to give our assistant chiefs and opportunity to get their feet under them.” Myers still lives in West Seneca but promised he will relocate closer to Fredonia.
He saw the Fredonia chief opening on social media this spring and said it came as a surprise to him. However, Myers has had a career plan since retiring from the Air Force to advance in the firefighting ranks, and saw Fredonia’s mix of paid and volunteer staff as an attractive option.
Myers got an early introduction to Fredonia politics when he asked for a new fire chief’s truck in May, a few weeks after he started the position. The Board of Trustees voted to get him the truck, but Myers faced criticism on social media and from Trustee James Lynden, who voted against it and said he should wait until the next budget season to ask for it.
The fire chief explained why he wants the new truck.
“As a chief, when we respond to incidents, we fulfill a role called the incident commander. The role of an incident commander, in a nutshell, is everything. What resources (we have), keeping our personnel safe, mitigating the hazard, the list can go on. That is accomplished by tools, and in training that we gain as we come up the ranks.
Myers continued, “In order to do that for myself, I utilize my chief’s truck as a command post. On large scale incidents that have mutual aid partners, police, public works, that becomes a very large command spot. The current vehicle that we had … did not have that ability. It did not have the command center in the back, it was too small to build something like that. The purchase of the new (truck) allows that.
Some people have aspirations of doing this as a profession, so they see this as, ‘I can become a volunteer firefighter and I can gain some education and training so that can help me.’ So it’s important for us to find out what brought someone to our Facebook page or our website and expand on that.”
However, Fredonia’s mix of paid and volunteer staff puts it “light years ahead of other departments that are struggling with the same thing,” he said. “We do have two or three people here at all times, but obviously it takes more than two or three people to provide the level of service we’re providing. The volunteerism is needed.”
Myers said that as Fredonia’s fire chief, he wants to “continue to sharpen our skills, our abilities and really our versatility to provide the community the highest level of service that they deserve. We can accomplish that by fostering an environment that capitalizes on professionalism, dedication and personal growth.
“You know, a lot of people say, ‘Professional firefighter, volunteer firefighter.’ A volunteer firefighter can be professional. That’s just the status of their pay. So that is my, as the fire chief’s, vision, to create a professional fire department.
“The customers, i.e. the civilians, they’re a huge part of our vision. … I think we’re going to see public relations events, educational opportunities and open houses, we’re going to see that grow.”