The Boyle Fire Department is under Joshua Anderson’s care after the Boyle council appointed him fire chief last Tuesday.
The previous chief Matt Purton stepped down from his title as chief when his day job started taking up more of his time, although he is still deputy chief.
“He just has too many time commitments with his job now to be able to take on the role of chief,” Anderson explained. “It’s good to have the old chief as the deputy chief because he knows how to run the show.”
Anderson has been with the Boyle department and Boyle EMS for two years.
“This is my first posting in EMS. I did my practicum up here and that started about two years ago this month,” he said. “Unfortunately I can’t leave my job to respond to a fire call. There are a lot of people here who can leave their jobs to respond to fire calls.”
Seeing as Anderson also works on EMS, he can’t just leave his job to attend to the fires. “Because my position is the chief now, I am running command, and that job I can do from the ambulance. We also always have an ambulance that rolls to most of the fire calls as well,” he said. “Hopefully I’m on the ambulance that’s going to the same fire call and I can participate and be in command.”
Anderson has a good feeling about being chief, and he honors the ones who came before him.
“I’m excited to be chief, and I am looking to move forward. There are a lot of changes I would like to make in the future,” Anderson said. “Not that anything is running badly, and we’ve got all new equipment now, but we’re struggling with membership.”
The Boyle department only has 12 members, and Anderson would like to see it at 20.
“We’re hopefully going to be doing a big recruiting campaign and trying to have more community involvement on our part,” he said. “We want people to be able to come in and talk to the fire fighters and be able to find out what’s going on in the community with the department.”
Although the Boyle Fire Department is volunteer, Anderson wants to see the fire fighters just as trained as a professional department.
The department is also home to a brand new fire truck.
