Excerpts from the KenoshaNews.com:
Somers Fire Chief Carson Wilkinson is back home. His new job has brought him closer to family and back into the firehouse.
For more than 25 years, Wilkinson was with the Kenosha Fire Department, most of those years as a division chief in charge of training. At the same time, he had been working part time at Road America in Elkhart Lake before taking a full-time position as the organization’s safety director.
Hired in March to replace Tom Smith, who left the Somers Fire Department more than a year ago, the Paddock Lake native said he took the Somers job because he wanted to come home.
“I wanted to get back to where my family is,” said Wilkinson, whose son David is a lieutenant with the Pleasant Prairie Fire Department. His daughter, who lives in Buffalo Grove, Ill., is also married to a firefighter.
In the nearly three months Wilkinson, 60, has been chief, he said he has formalized the way firefighters in the village are introduced to their job. His son presented him with the chief’s helmet when he was sworn in on March 10, .
Wilkinson believes that families should be involved because “it’s one of those professions that affects family life. You can’t leave the job at work all the time,” he said. “So, it’s important to have it mean something for family members.”
Under his command are 55 employees, including eight full-time and 47 part-time and paid-on-call firefighters. Among the goals Wilkinson has for the department is to improve its rating for fire departments.
“The previous chiefs got Somers to an ISO 4,” he said. “We’re going to try to move it toward (a rating of) 3.”
That rating, he said, would be comparable to Kenosha and Pleasant Prairie.
While the rating isn’t affected by its rescue component, Wilkinson said he wants to have firefighters become certified paramedics.
The department has certified I-99 emergency medical technicians, who perform many of the same duties as paramedics, however, the I-99 classification will soon be changing, he said.
thanks Dan
