WITH CHRIS RIVERA
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SFR: As the city's fire chief, what was your take on the [July 31] Finance Committee meeting about raising property taxes to pay for more police and fire fighters?
CR:
It was tough to tell. I think it went fairly well. We weren't told 'no,' that the councilors were completely opposed to this. So there's still some hope. We have a public hearing [scheduled for Aug. 8] to discuss further the property tax issue and we'll see what happens.
I hear City Manager [Asenath Kepler] got pretty into it there.
She did, yeah. A couple times the mayor tapped her on the back. I don't think I'd ever seen anything like that before.
Were you guys happy to see her fighting for you?
I think most of the firefighters that were there in the crowd felt very strongly that she was definitely fighting for us. We're very appreciative of it.
Do you feel like the City Council is resistant to the idea of a property tax hike in general?
It sounded like they were upset about the process, the way that it came about. Not necessarily opposed to the property tax itself, but opposed to the timing of it. I don't think it was anyone's fault. In order for this property tax to be enacted quickly, it needs to be enacted by the end of August, so that puts a little bit of time constraints on the councilors then. It's putting them in a tough position also.
How bad is the staffing right now?
This year has been tough for us. Like I said, at the Finance meeting, we had some people that have been working 96 hours in a row. A lot of people don't know that we pull 48-hour shifts. All our guys are there for 48 hours at a time. When they're supposed to go home, if someone doesn't show up, if someone's on vacation, if someone calls in sick or something, we can't keep a fire engine or an ambulance parked in the station, so somebody has to stay to cover the minimum staffing requirements that we have.
Do you still have Dalmatians in the fire trucks?
I wish. We have questions like that all the time. It would be a great PR tool, but somewhere back East many years ago, one of the dogs bit one of the kids. Ever since then, it's been a little bit of a touchy issue. A liability.
Do you still have, like in the movies, the pole that the guys can slide down?
This station does. Many stations are getting away from the poles, again 'cause somewhere back East someone got up and was sleepwalking and fell through one of the holes and got hurt.
All the bad stuff happens back East.
Not all of it, but the ones that I'm familiar with seem to have happened back East.
Where do the typical fire problems in a place like Santa Fe originate?
Probably more house fires than anything else. It's usually little things like electrical fires or water heater problems. When lightning strikes, you can have alarm malfunctions-every alarm check we have to go and investigate to make sure it's not anything serious-but most of the time it's pretty small house fires. We have more fires than people realize. They usually happen late at night, everyone's asleep, we get there; it's usually a small room and the contents are on fire. We put it out rather quickly, and we're on our way. A lot of times people will never hear about it because those things don't make the newspaper.
What's the worst fire you've seen?
There have been a couple. The Salvation Army fire was probably the most recent. That was a very difficult fire. It happened four, five years ago. Another one, way back, early in my career, 19, 18 years ago, was the Yamaha shop-where Wild Oats is now, on St. Francis Drive. Those were probably the two biggest.
How'd you first get into firefighting?
My father was a firefighter here in Santa Fe. I don't remember when he started, but he left about a couple weeks after I started. We worked for a couple weeks in the same department, then he retired and I took over. But I was in college for a little while, I came home for the summer, saw the job announcement, decided, 'Hey, that'd be a cool job.' So I filled out the application, went through the testing process, was offered a position and decided to do it.
For everyday citizens, I think the seminal firefighting movie is Backdraft. Have you seen that movie? Do you think it's an accurate portrayal of the life of a firefighter?
I have seen that movie several times. I think it's a good portrayal of firefighters in Chicago, firefighters in New York, back East, where you have a lot of brothers that are in the fire service. It's tough to try to, in a movie situation, to show what a real fire's like, until you've actually gone into it. I love
Backdraft
because all the buildings are on fire. and you see a lot of flame, and it looks real good, but there's no smoke. Try doing that same thing with your eyes closed, and that's really what a fire's like. Hot, and you can't see a thing.
