Excerpts from mystateline.com:
In the City of Loves Park, there’s a new fire chief. Jerry Wiltfang, who was sworn in last month, spent almost his entire life fighting fires for the Rockford Fire Department, but he’s faced with a new challenge at a different department — he wants to reduce response times in Loves Park when a caller dials 911.
“The goal is to reduce our response time from the current 15 minutes to somewhere around 6 minutes,” Wiltfang said.
He’s been working to hire full-time firefighters since the department only has volunteers. Plans are in the works to build a third fire station on the far east side of the city, which will cost roughly $5 million. Right now, it can take firefighters up to 20 minutes to respond to that part of the city. The city’s full time fire fighters start this week.
Chief Wiltfang also served as the emergency operations director for the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office for several years.
