A
Message from the President…Chief
Bill Walker
Thank you
again for entrusting me to be your President for the next year.
I am very honored and excited to represent you and this great
organization. We have a great Board and we all look forward to
the challenges ahead of us.
As we announced at the annual conference, we have a couple of
new faces on the Board. The first is a new Executive Director,
Chief Ken Mullen. Ken is going to pick up the reins from Cathy
who has decided to retire. Cathy has done a great job for the
association over the years and Ken has some big shoes to fill.
We all wish Cathy well as she moves into a new direction in
life.
We are also welcoming Chief Ken Briscoe to our board. Ken has
been elected to serve as the director from the Western
Firefighters. Ken has just recently received the North Carolina
Firefighter of the Year award. It could not have gone to a more
deserving individual. We look forward to working with Ken.
One of my major goals for the
association this year is firefighter safety. We are all
familiar with the national theme of "Everyone Goes Home", the
State's "25 in 5", and we have all signed the seat belt pledge.
However, we are continuing to lose firefighters. My theme for
the year is "Safety Starts at the Top". We, as chief officers,
must take safety seriously and put it at the top of our
priorities. We must enforce the policies already in place. For
example, Seat Belts are continuously not being worn. It is not
only a good policy to wear them but it is also the Law. We need
to reevaluate our safety program to see what else we can do to
ensure firefighter safety.
We need to look at how we are operating under the Incident
Command System. It is important to operate under ICS but it is
also important to have the commander located in one location and
stay there so he/she can see and be seen. Everyone must know
where to find the commander and they need to be able to see the
whole picture. Chief Randy Godwin wrote a position statement for
the Board which was released at the annual conference on ICS.
It is the
little things that we overlook that can turn tragic. My goal is
to address them now before they do. Let's all work together to
make North Carolina a safer place for our firefighters.
