OLDS — The Olds Fire Department now has its first full-time deputy fire chief in charge of operations and training. And he was hired from within the ranks.
He is Jason Kjorsvik, a member of the department for 23 years. His new job began May 19.
The town announced his hiring on May 13. About 50 applications were received from as far away as Ontario.
Being a deputy fire chief is not new to Kjorsvik. He has served in that role for the past five years on a paid-on-call basis.
The position is part of the town’s fire department master plan, approved in the fall of 2019.
At that time, Suzanne Charbonneau of Dillon Consulting Limited, the Oakville Ont. company that created the plan, said the move was necessary in order to prevent the department's chief, Justin Andrew, from becoming “burnt out.”
The training aspect of Kjorsvik’s portfolio is pretty straightforward.
The operations side is sprawling.
It involves managing and overseeing maintenance of the department’s fleet and equipment, purchasing, testing, and maintaining the safety certifications.
“There’s just an endless amount of equipment that we have that has to be tested, maintained, replaced and tracked,” Andrew said during an interview.
Andrew said having Kjorsvik look after those duties will free him to look after things like policy and procedure and community engagement, he said.
The master plan actually called for two full-time deputy fire chiefs to be hired.
The second deputy chief position would be responsible for looking after logistics and planning. That would include fire prevention and education, special projects, recruitment and retention of new members. It would likely also include disaster services.
Andrew said hiring for that second full-time deputy fire chief position is on hold, due to spending constraints brought on by the economic downturn and the battering the economy has taken as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“It might get bumped out further. Or if there’s explosive growth and recovery, then maybe it’s moved up. But that will be evaluated annually to see where it falls,” Andrew said.
Andrew was pleased to be able to promote from within.
“I think the important thing is that we had a lot of highly skilled and motivated people apply for the position from across Alberta and even beyond,” he said.
“But when you have somebody within your organization who is also highly skilled and able to do the position, it just really shows the depth that we have and potential in our local talent, for sure.”
