Mill Creek Assistant Chief is also County Assessor The Faces of a Volunteer Firefighter
16December 2020 / January 2021Oklahoma Firefighter
Scott Kirby with is 3-year-old son Tite
Mill Creek Volunteer Firefighter Scott Kirby was born in Ada and raised in the Mill Creek and Sulphur area. He’s been with Mill Creek FD for 26 years, including the last 24 as Assistant Chief. He’s also been with the County Assessor’s Office of Murray County for 23 years, including the last 18 as County Assessor. In a recent question-and-answer session with Oklahoma Firefighter, Kirby, 48, shared the following: Firefighting background? Prior to joining Mill Creek Volunteer Fire Department, I had no firefighting experience. So my firefighting background is the past 26 years. Other jobs/titles/positions? I am also the training officer for the fire department. I do most of the paperwork and equipment specking and purchasing. I have been an Advanced EMT for the past year. The 24 years prior to becoming an Advanced EMT, I have been a Basic EMT. My rookie year, I became a “first responder” which is currently referred to as the EMR level. How does your family impact your duty as a volunteer firefighter? My wife (Amber) is also on the fire department as one of our EMRs and serves as the fire department secretary. Impacts my family has had on my duties would be being out of town and unavailable to respond to calls due to being out of town with sporting events and livestock shows. With a 3-year-old, there are times I have him by myself and I will be unavailable. Positive impacts are the family gets involved with fire department functions and fundraiser activities. How’d you go about getting into the fire service? I started talking to the volunteer fire chief of our department when he would come into the grocery store I was working at. He encouraged me to come to the next fire meeting. What have been some highlights of your fire service career so far? Being involved with the grant writing and successfully being awarded the grants. The grants we have been awarded have allowed us to purchase equipment and vehicles that without the grants we couldn’t have done. With the equipment and vehicles, we now have equipment we can be proud of and can better serve our citizens. What are your hopes for the future? As far as the fire depart-
ment goes, I hope to get more of my firefighters fired up about training and improve their current training. I would like to obtain a grant to update our rescue truck and get an additional engine. At some point in the future, I hope to get a new fire station built. Has there ever been a time when your career has interfered with your job as a volunteer firefighter? During those times when I am out of town, I may miss calls and/or meetings. I work in an office most of the time. As an elected county official, I can usually leave at any time to respond to a call. But there are times that I cannot -- if I am in a meeting with a taxpayer, working on timed reports for the Oklahoma Tax Commission or if the office is shorthanded at the time. Is there one call that sticks out in your mind? After 26 years on the fire department, there are several calls that stick out in my mind. My first call was a grass fire. We had to take the battery of another volunteer’s vehicle to respond in the tanker. The structure fire that stands out would be the warehouse fire. The population of our town is 330. We have a company in town that supplies equipment to the area rock crushers and sand plants. The call came in the early morning hours. The fire was in the ceiling of the office area. While gaining access to the offices, the fire spread rapidly across the ceiling to the open ceiling warehouse. The warehouse contained numerous combustibles, hazardous chemicals, three vehicles and a propane fueled forklift. The fire went multiple alarms with mutual aid fire departments from Ravia, Tishomingo, Reagan, Connerville and Sulphur responding. The office area sustained smoke and water damage while the remainder of the warehouse was a total loss. The Fire Marshal determined fire origin was electrical. Owners reported having a squirrel and rat problem in the ceiling. The rapid spread of fire to the warehouse was contributed to a combination of years of dust and cobweb accumulation and heating of the combustibles stored in the warehouse. There are two grass fires that stand out from my later years after becoming an officer. The first one was back in 1998. It was a very dry year that year. It was in September. A pop-up thunderstorm had developed. It was pouring rain at my house and the tones dropped for a grass fire. My first thought was no way. Then radio traffic started, the first truck was attempting to gain
At the conclusion of a working structure fire Wildland Task Force to eastern Oklahoma
Structural firefighter training
access. Smoke was visible but exact location was unknown. The fire was in an area locally known as “Rock Prairie.” Access to the area is a minimum of 20-30 minutes due to the rough terrain. Mutual aid was requested from several fire departments. Once units got on scene, command was established at our tanker that I was operating. We fought fire for 2-plus days. It was my first scene to be the incident commander. In the 48-hour time frame, we had three wind shifts. We wound up with 29 fire departments by the end of the incident, OHP airplane giving us a bird’s eye view, a chinook helicopter and two black hawks. I remained on the scene and incident commander for the entire 48-plus hour incident. The second fire was in an adjoining fire district. We fought fire for three days and had it out. On day four, state forestry came in to do some mop-up. While doing a backfire operation, they lost the line. Fire spread rapidly across “Rock Prairie” again. Multiple task force units were called in to assist the Johnston County fire departments. Staging area was set up at our station for incoming task forces to check in. Incident command made the decision to evacuate Northwest Johnston and Southeast Murray Counties. As Emergency Manager for our town, I contacted the National Weather Service to request one of the first, if not the first, Fire Emergency to be broadcast on the Emergency Broadcast System. How has the fire department evolved since you first joined? Our fire department has evolved greatly since I joined. When I started, we had no pagers. The emergency number rang at most of the firefighters’ houses. There was no 911 number to call in our county. House addresses were more difficulty to locate than they are now. We had used bunker gear. In my 26 years, we have updated bunker gear and wildland gear twice. In 1994, our apparatus consisted of three brush trucks -- late 60’s Kaiser Jeep, old Dodge forestry truck and a gammy goat), a 1970 model 1250 gallon unbaffled tanker and old Dodge truck for a rescue truck. Today, our apparatus includes four brush trucks (2020 Dodge 1 ton, 2008 Ford 1 ton, 1980 Chevy DOD truck and the original Kaiser Jeep), a 2010 Kenworth 2200 gallon Pierce Tanker, a 2500 gallon 5 ton tanker, 1981 Ford Pierce Engine 1000 gpm with a 500 gallon tank, 1996 Rescue Truck fully equipped less water and a 2003 Chevy Tahoe Command unit. As for the fire department or fire service as a whole, there are several things that come to mind. Better equipment, more grant opportunities and other funding sources. Probably one of the biggest is the improvement of the fire service training.