New fire chief 'honoured and humbled' to take on role

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There’s a new chief in town, but he’s no stranger to the Port City or the department he now leads.

Late last month, with former fire chief Kevin Clifford retiring, the city named Rob Nichol as the new Saint John fire chief.

While Nichol is new to the role, he’s got nearly 30 years under his belt with the city’s fire department – including just over three years serving as deputy chief.

The move up, Nichol said, comes with some changes and a look ahead.

“There’s certainly a process and part of that is succession planning. Often the role of the fire chief is preparing people so they can move into that role,” Nichol said, noting deputy chiefs will often move into the chief’s position.

“There’s always the option, depending on where the city’s priorities are, to go external, but that was certainly part of the succession plan.”

Nichol said he is “honoured and humbled” to now be leading the department, which boasts six fire stations, 132 full-time firefighters, 20 casual firefighters and 10 administrative and command staff. He said with any change in leadership there’s also an expected change in management and he’s feeling that excitement from the department as it awaits to see what his vision of the future includes.

“From the floor I think there’s some excitement on what that change is but it’s also building on the strong leadership from the leadership before,” he said. “I think it’s important to remember that you’re building on that strong foundation, and you have a moment in time when you can move the department forward.”

Nichol said command staff recently met to discuss the department and what the future holds with a lot of the talk looking at the need to refresh the department’s mission, vision and value statements. He said those guiding documents can be updated to reflect changes in time and the city.

“I think it’s important, though, because it’s not just my vision. I think the community engagement and, obviously, the people on the floor, is incredibly important so that we, collaboratively, renew our mission and vision,” the chief said. “That helps us set our perimeters and set our objectives for where we’re going to go each year.”

That’s key as the city continues and grow and, like any municipal department, the fire department needs to be able to keep up with that growth and maintain its level of service, he said. That growth brings different challenges and the department needs to be ready to face those challenges, he said.

Nichol said as he settles into his new role his vision includes what he referred to as “the three Cs”: collaboration, communication and community engagement. That trio speaks to the opportunity of creating mutual aid agreements with neighbouring municipalities, he said. There are benefits and an opportunity to offer the public “better service if we do collaborate better,” he said stressing it’s not about reducing services anywhere but, rather, supplementing other departments.

“There’s better efficiencies by collaborating but it shouldn’t be a means to reduce what is in those communities right now,” he said. “We’ve had some very good initial conversations with the outside agencies and I think there’s a lot of optimism.”