Retiring Gig Harbor fire chief reflects on his service — and a future with no alarms
The longtime Gig Harbor Fire Chief, John Burgess, will retire on April 1 after what will have been a decade of service. A selection process is in place to find his replacement by March 1.
Chief Burgess, 52, took the position in April of 2011, replacing former chief Bob Black. Burgess came from a family of firefighters: both his father and grandfather were firefighters. Burgess continued on that three-generation legacy in his own career.
“It’s a little emotional in a really good, positive way,” to reflect on his time with the department, Burgess told The Gateway.
“It has been one of the greatest joys of my life to serve this community in all the different roles that I’ve served in which include being a firefighter-paramedic, a lieutenant, a battalion chief, and now lastly in my administrative role,” Burgess said. “It’s been an amazing ride and I’m going to miss it, yet I’m also excited for whatever that next chapter of my life might look like.”
Burgess heads a department with nine fire stations, five of which are staffed full time, and approximately 125 full-time employees. It covers 54 square miles of the Gig Harbor Peninsula, which includes the city of Gig Harbor as well as the unincorporated areas surrounding it, such as Fox Island. The annual budget is “just shy of $30 million,” Burgess said.
Each station has a fire engine and three medic units are strategically located throughout the area, as well as a battalion chief on duty. Burgess said firefighters and medics answered nearly 6,000 calls last year.
Burgess said he first came to the department in March 1987 as a resident volunteer while going to Bates Vocational School He lived at one of fire stations while going through his training.
After graduating from Bates, he enrolled in the paramedic program at Tacoma Community College., graduating with an associates degree in technical arts as well. He then also took classes at Washington State University while working as a firefighter.
He worked for the Graham fire department for a little over a year before coming back to Gig Harbor, where he would stay. He has lived near Kopachuck State Park for 15 years
Time with family
Burgess said he is going to take some time to reflect, though he isn’t planning to “retire retire” and will look to continue serving the community in some way.
“As crazy as this might sound to some, I’m actually planning to take a year of just reflection and enjoy time with my family. Doing some travel as covid will allow,” Burgess said. That family includes his wife, Beth, and two sons, Casey and Ryan.
After that, “I know that I’ll always be involved in some level of giving back to community and service. I don’t know exactly what that might look like,” said. “I have lots of ideas that are starting to percolate and form up but it’s so early on that I just want to take time and really use this as a break.”
The current candidates to fill his shoes are Dan Bjurstrom, the current assistant chief for finance and administration for the department, Todd Meyer, the current assistant chief of operations, and Dennis Doan, who was the chief of the Boise Fire Department in Idaho until recently.
Final interviews are scheduled during a special meeting on January 15, 2021.
It starts with service
Asked if he has any wisdom for all of his potential successors, Burgess emphasized always focusing on being in service to the community.
That starts, he said with, “Our fifty thousand that live right here in Gig Harbor,” Burgess said. “That is a key pillar to make sure that you are in the community, that you are building relations, that you are available, and that you’re focusing on how best to serve those people.”
Burgess also said it is important to be an advocate and supporter for the department’s employees
“The other pillar is making sure that you’re taking really good care of the employees that work at Gig Harbor Fire,” Burgess said. “These are men and women that choose service and are willing to pay the ultimate price of going in and risking their lives to save people. During a pandemic, that’s become a real thing on a daily basis.”
A good neighbor
The fire chief on the Key Peninsula, Chief Dustin Morrow, said his experience with Burgess as a neighbor has been fantastic.
“John from the beginning welcomed me to the community and made his support known to me,” Morrow said. “John is a real professional and somebody who has definitely served the industry really well and the Gig Harbor community without a doubt.”
Morrow said he met Burgess when he was named Key Peninsula Fire Chief in 2019 and that the two of them have worked together in many capacities. The two departments share a border and often provide mutual aid.
Morrow said he and the Gig Harbor community will miss the longtime chief.
“While I’m sure they will have a wonderful replacement, I know they will miss John for sure,” Morrow said.
. Burgess was named as ‘Chief of the Year’ in 2016 by Tacoma-Pierce County Chaplaincy (T-PCC) which cited his “encouragement and support” of the county’s fire chaplains.
Financial stewardship
However, the accomplishment of which Burgess is most proud is keeping the department in the black.
“When I went into the fire chief position we were still really deep in the great recession,” Burgess said. “It was about keeping jobs, trying to maintain our levels of service under significant financial restrictions and cuts and needing to navigate that really well. I’m proud to say that today we do sit in a very stable financial position and we were able to navigate those financial times very well where we didn’t lose anybody as far as 911 responders.”
Burgess also said the department is not facing any debt and that they have been what he considers to be shrewd financial stewards.
Looking to the future, Burgess said the department requires financial support in order to keep operations running smoothly. In 2017, the department asked for voters to lift the levy lid in order to maintain the level of service.
With the pandemic putting strain on local budgets, it is a challenge that the department will have to continue facing.
“One of the key things that we’ve identified and I think have done really, really well with the growth of our community is the need to increase staffing,” Burgess said. “The lid lift and the growth in our community has allowed us to do that.”
Burgess said this has ensured proper response times. A hiring push planned for this year will help meet those demands.
“That’s going to give us staffing for January 1 of next year to be able to move all five of our engines from two-person companies to three-person companies,” Burgess said.
Medics to the fore
Burgess noted that during his career, fire departments have increasingly become important providers of medical services.
“It has been a radical change since I first started, ” Burgess said. “When I first started, the ambulance service was provided by a private provider here in Gig Harbor. During that period of time, we as a fire department provided initial response to medical aid and then the private ambulance company would transport.”
Burgess said that a problem arose when the company moved across the bridge to University Place because Gig Harbor was not generating enough calls for them to be profitable.
“That wasn’t acceptable for us for response times. I was a paramedic at the time,” Burgess said. “We decided that we really need to put together our own transport-capable units. So we did.”
Burgess said a 2011 levy increase helped ensure they could provide EMS services. These services now account for 85 percent of the department’s calls, and Burgess anticipates demand will continue to shift that way.
“We don’t actually charge people that live in our district, that are paying taxes in our district. We don’t charge them anything out of pocket, beyond what the insurance pays for,” Burgess said. “Now we’ve grown from having one medic unit in our community and then, to meet national standards for response times, we actually have three. We’ve had three now for my entire ten years as fire chief. It certainly has made a big difference.”
Stations are aging
A pressing issue that Burgess said will need to be addressed is the aging infrastructure of the department.
“The majority of our fire stations were built in the ‘80s and so they’re getting a bit long in the tooth,” Burgess said. “We’re going to need to be looking at how we bring those fire stations up that will carry us another thirty or forty years.”
Burgess said a consultant has been hired to begin looking at the early stages of an infrastructure plan and that that is “early work the new fire chief will need to be involved in.”
Reach Chase Hutchinson at chase.hutchinson@thenewstribune.com
This story was originally published January 9, 2021 at 5:30 AM.
