Fire chief taking new job

After nearly six years on the job here, Fort Frances Fire Chief Steve Richardson will be moving to southern Ontario next month to take a position there.
As of May 29, Richardson will be deputy fire chief for the Town of Georgina, a community on Lake Simcoe, northeast of Newmarket.
“There’s 31 full-time firefighters, they’re just hiring four more right now. [And] the town has three fire stations,” Richardson noted in an interview Monday.
“In addition to the full-time complement, there’s 45 volunteers,” he added.
“It’s a town of about 44,000 [people] but it’s spread out over 280 square kilometres,” Richardson remarked. “It’s got quite a mixture of your rural centres and your urban centres.”
As deputy fire chief, Richardson will be responsible for day-to-day operations, heading up the fire prevention and training divisions, as well as being involved in emergency planning.
“I’ll be co-ordinating a lot more people. It’s a larger urban centre,” he noted. “I’d imagine down there some of the hazards they’ve identified for their emergency planning are considerably different than what we have up here.
“So I’ll be busy re-learning all that, working with the different partners down there,” he explained.
“It’s certainly a position I could not pass up,” Richardson stressed. “Although I am stepping down a position to deputy fire chief, it’s a growing department, very progressive, with a lot of new areas where I can strive to learn more in and better myself.
“Hopefully, one day I can move up again to the position of fire chief.”
Leaving the district with Richardson will be his wife, Gail, and twin daughters, Laura and Lindsay, who are in Grade 9 at Fort High.
The couple’s eldest daughter, Ashley, is just finishing her first year at Trent University in Peterborough.
Richardson moved here with his family in June, 2000 after serving as a fire captain in Innisfil, Ont.
“Myself and my family, we’ve loved the area and enjoyed our time in Fort Frances,” he remarked. “Working for the town, it has certainly helped me to grow into the position today where I can move onto a larger department.
“Working with the district people, the fire chiefs, the clerks, the different municipal councils out there, it’s been a growing and learning experience,” he added. “They’ve been a super great bunch.
“I’m going to miss the people, I’m going to miss the outdoors, the hunting, the fishing, the lakes in the summer,” he said. “Me and my family, we enjoy the camping and the outdoors, and we’re certainly going to miss all that.
“It’s a major move for the twins,” Richardson admitted. “They’ve made a lot of good close friends up here, they’ve spent the last six years of their life here.
“I understand what they’re going through.
But they’ve been adjusting, and have even been helping to look for homes on the Internet. Things like that,” added Richardson. “I’ve got a super wife and family, they’re very supportive.”
Richardson also was pleased to note there’s been an increase in fire safety and prevention awareness in Fort Frances over the past six years.
“The residents and the businesses here in Fort Frances have been great to me during my time here,” he said.
“Through our prevention and education programs here, and through the co-operation of the public, our fire losses have shown a steady decrease in the past six years—and I’m sure that’s going to continue.
“I want to thank the people of Fort Frances for working with the fire department to ensure they’ve got working smoke alarms and family escape plans, and ensuring they’ve been keeping heir homes and businesses fire safe.
“It sure is paying off and showing in the statistics now.”
In his role as fire chief, Richardson has been emergency management co-ordinator for the Town of Fort Frances and district fire co-ordinator for the entire Rainy River District.
He’s currently vice-chair of the Rainy River Valley Safety Coalition, and also sits on the hospital emergency management team and Substance Abuse Prevention Team, to name just a few committees.
The Town of Fort Frances started advertising to fill the position of fire chief this week.