Excerpts from jg-tc.com:
Fire Chief Brian Mohr will retire next month after nearly 30 years with the Bloomington Fire Department. He began his career with the fire department and 1991. He was promoted in 2011 to shift commander and assistant chief. In 2013, he became a training officer and was promoted to fire chief in 2015.
An interim fire chief will be named in the near future.
Excerpts from the NWHerald.com:
Excerpts from lemontfire.com:
Lemont Fire Protection District Chief George Rimbo has submitted a letter of retirement from the district effective August 30, 2019. The Board of Trustees accepted the letter with gratitude and appreciation for his time and dedication during a 31 year career with the district.
Chief Rimbo began with the Lemont Fire District on April 8, 1988 as a paid-on-call firefighter and was hired full-time on August 21, 1989. During this time, he continued his education and was promoted to lieutenant on November 1, 1994, battalion chief on October 5, 2009 and fire chief on July 18, 2013. He has seen the district grow from one station and 1,000 calls a year with a paid-on-call response, to 4,100 calls from four stations with 54 full-time firefighter/paramedics plus a support staff of seventeen. As fire chief, working together with the present Board of Trustees and the district employees, the fire district has achieved financial stability, created new administrative positions, maintained positive labor management relations, and began the process of becoming an accredited agency with the Center for Public Safety Excellence. Chief Rimbo compliments the hard work and dedication of all district employees who together make up a team providing outstanding service to the public.
Excerpts from theDailyHerald.com:
A change is coming for Countryside Fire Protection District Fire Chief Jeff Steingart, who recognized his life’s dream as a boy and stayed with it until retiring last week. Steingart, 55, started with Countryside as a paid-on-call firefighter in 1982 and was hired as a full-time firemedic in January 1986. He steadily advanced, serving as a lieutenant and fire prevention bureau director, captain and shift commander, and assistant and deputy chief before being named to the top spot in 2006.
Last week was Steingart’s last in the office. A Change in Command ceremony with a traditional fire department walk-out is scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, at district headquarters, 600 N. Deerpath Drive, Vernon Hills. Deputy Chief Chuck Smith will be sworn in as the new chief.
Steingart grew up in Hawthorn Woods and became a Mundelein Fire Department Explorer at 13. After graduating from Stevenson High School in 1981, he took an EMT class, worked for a private ambulance company, and then the Highwood Fire Department before joining Countryside full-time.
Countryside covers 24 square miles, including portions of Vernon Hills, Hawthorn Woods, Long Grove, Kildeer, Indian Creek and unincorporated Lake County. Activity has increased significantly since 1982 when Countryside personnel responded to 1,391 calls. Last year, the total was 4,918.
Steingart’s resume includes dozens of awards, recognitions, certifications, and affiliations. He has been a member of the MABAS (Mutual Aid Box Alarm System) Division 4 all-hazards incident management team since 2014 and president since 2016.
He is proud of Countryside’s ISO rating improving from Class 5 to just shy of Class 1, and the department’s recent reaccreditation by the Commission on Fire Accreditation International for a fifth consecutive year.
A 30-year resident of Vernon Hills, Steingart plans to stay put and will remain involved in the fire service. He’s been hired as director of strategic planning and administration for the Wauconda Fire Protection District, a part-time civilian position.
Experts from kenoshanews.com:
Doug McElmury was 18 years old when he was quite literally roped in to helping rescue a girl who had fallen 60 feet off the rocks at Devil’s Lake State Park in Baraboo. An avid rock climber, he and a friend were at the park to scale the cliffs when the girl’s frantic mother asked whether they were the rescue team responding to the mishap.
“So we got to the girl and the rangers came up, but the rangers weren’t trained in rope rescue,” said McElmury, fire chief for the village the last five years.
McElmury, who has since rescued many people and battled dozens of fires, will be retiring from the department on Monday following 28 years service. But it was helping to rescue the girl, who was on a scouting trip when she had slipped from the rocks, that began his long career serving the community.
He and his friend worked together with authorities bringing up the injured girl. After she fell she had struck a ledge 40 feet below before she fell another 20 feet.
McElmury later spoke with the emergency medical personnel about how he might be able to pursue a similar career. They encouraged him to join his local fire department.
In 1981, he started as a volunteer firefighter at the department in Wheatland and worked there for nine years. He worked part-time with an ambulance service in Lake Geneva and was a paid-on-call firefighter for that city’s fire department, as well.
All the while, he also started his own business using his ropes and rescue skills to train local firefighters.
At Gateway Technical College in 1989, McElmury taught a class with Pleasant Prairie Fire Chief Paul Guilbert on basic firefighting. It was Guilbert who encouraged him to apply for a firefighter opening there. He worked his way through the ranks, including a promotion to training officer, then to captain, and assistant chief.
In 2011, when Guilbert retired, McElmury was the interim chief and, eventually, the department’s top administrator. In the short time he has been chief, McElmury has overseen the expansion of the department from its Station 2 location at 8044 88th Ave. to a second location at the village’s main campus.
In the fall of 2015, Station 1 opened at 3801 Springbrook Road, to accommodate larger apparatus bays with new apparatus and specialized fire equipment, including a Zodiac boat, equipment trailer, and an ATV. The newer station also contains semi-private sleeping quarters.
This spring, McElmury and his 38 full- and part-time, and on-call firefighters trained on a new $1.1 million ladder truck that replaced an older truck which had been with the department for at least as long as he has been with it.
He credits the firefighters, support staff and the village’s administration — from community development to public works — for facilitating and anticipating challenges to help the department run smoothly.
He’ll be working part-time as a trainer for a California company that sells the kind of rope that pulled him in to rescue people in the first place.
“I’ll be able to travel round the country working for them teaching rope rescue, which is what my passion is,” he said.
thanks Dan
The Glenview Announcements has an article about the upcoming retirement Glenview Fire Chief Wayne Globerger:
Glenview Fire Chief Wayne Globerger doesn’t deny most firefighters like him get an adrenaline rush from running into burning buildings. And he’s seen his share of accidents and misfortune — floods, car wrecks, plane crashes and tornadoes.
Still, nothing compares to his two weeks in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish, where in August 2005 the deadly Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,800. Globerger managed an emergency aid team of 100, finding 145 bodies and rescuing 12.
On Dec. 19, Globerger will retire after 27 years with Glenview Fire Department, eight as chief. He wants to care for his wife, Claudia, who has multiple sclerosis, and live in the country and raise alpachas, which look similar to llamas.
“It’s time to put her first. I’ve been playing fireman all these years. Claudia had to quit work and it’s a daily struggle. We’re moving to the Kentucky/Tennessee border,” he said.
Globerger’s brother and son are firefighters, and as a youth he signed up for a cadet program at Knollwood Fire Department. “I was only 15 years old and you had to be 16. I lied to get it. I knew what I wanted to become.”
Globerger, 51, oversees 81 employees and five fire stations. In citing current challenges, Globerger said Glenview’s senior population is increasing and put demands on village emergency medical services. This year his department had 10 percent more medical calls.
Deputy Chief Ralph Ensign has been named the new Glenview fire chief.
The Daily Herald has an article about a retirement announcement of the Arlington Heights fire chief:
After almost four decades with Arlington Heights, Fire Chief Glenn Eriksen announced Monday that he will be leaving the department next month to take a position with MABAS-Illinois, the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System. Ericksen will end his 39 years with the Arlington Heights Fire Department on Feb. 13. He is only Arlington Heights’ fourth fire chief since the village switched from a volunteer department to a full-time paid department in 1958
Ericksen will be working as section chief of administration with MABAS-Illinois, according to the release. MABAS is a statewide mutual response system for fire and EMS teams.
Ericksen’s final salary at Arlington Heights was $139,711, according to the village’s human resources department. Ericksen could be eligible to earn up to 75 percent of that salary in annual pension, in addition to his new salary at MABAS.
Ericksen started as a fire alarm operator with the Arlington Heights Fire Department in 1974 and became a firefighter in 1981. He was a firefighter/paramedic from 1986 until 1993, when he was promoted to fire lieutenant. He had also been a fire captain, fire commander and deputy fire chief before being named chief in 2004.
During Ericksen’s time as chief, the fire department obtained a grant that allowed it to hire an additional nine firefighters and was honored with the 2010 SAFE Communities Designation from the National Safety Council on behalf of the World Health Organization. He also oversaw the addition of an emergency operations center, which is used as a communication headquarters for the village in case of a local disaster.
Dixon said he will name an acting fire chief next month before starting an open search for Ericksen’s replacement.
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