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Greenville Fire
Department promotes three
By Bob Rhoades
Senior Scribe
After years of trying, the Greenville Fire Department now has
lieutenants. Originally the department had a Chief and a Captain
for the three shifts. Besides their duties as the shift
commander, each one of the captains was charged with another major
area, like maintenance, inspections, etc.
As time went on and standards went into place the fire service was
faced with budget problems but there was still a need to keep things
going in the right direction. The implementation of the Incident
Command System in the fire service did a lot for firefighter safety but
pointed out how lopsided we were in terms of management.
ICS shows us that the span of control should never exceed 7 workers for
one supervisor. It showed that someone needed to be in
charge. That meant that if the Chief Officer was unavailable, the
shift commander had to take complete charge of an incident, leaving his
crew with no leader. A few years ago, part of the problem
was solved when and Assistant Chief Position was created. Now it
is even better with the creation of the lieutenant’s position.
This will now almost guarantee that there will always be an officer on
duty when vacations and other shift days happen where the Captain must
be off.
All of these firefighters are Level II firefighters and completed a
Civil Service test in competition with other Greenville
Firefighters. All carry an Ohio Fire Instructor card and are
trained in high angle rescue, trench rescue, and to the hazardous
materials technician level besides the required firefighting
courses. All three are married and have children.
Lt. Brandenburg has served with the GFD for 12 years is married with
children as well as his colleagues. Lt. Thompson has 9 years with
the GFD and Lt. Subler has 11 years in. Congratulations to all
three.
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