Heading to Carpinteria, Glendale fire chief grateful to have served local community
The main thing Greg Fish will miss about Glendale is the community.
He’ll miss the people he has forged relationships with over the years in the city as well as his colleagues in the Glendale Fire Department. Fish has spent 31 years with Glendale fire, serving the last three as its chief, but his roots with the city run deeper.
Although he grew up in nearby Sun Valley with five siblings, he said his family found themselves spending a lot of time in Glendale.
“Everything we did as a kid we did it here [in Glendale]. We’d go to the theaters … restaurants … we went to the Galleria when it was built,” the 52-year-old said. “We did it in Glendale because it was such a great place to be.”
Fish also attended Glendale Community College in 1986, taking fire science classes taught by Glendale Fire Capt. Ken Mudgett, with the intention of becoming a firefighter. A year and a half later, on April 20, 1987, he joined Glendale’s department as a recruit.
“That’s like hitting the lottery, working for a fire department like Glendale’s and for a city you’ve spent a lot of time in,” Fish said. “All the stars just lined up for success for me.”
So it was a bittersweet experience, as he called it, when he decided to retire from the department at the end of this month after three decades of service. With his children out of the house, Fish and his wife, Maureen, will relocate to Santa Barbara County.
One reason for the move is it’s a lot closer to his three brothers and two sisters. Another reason is that he’ll be heading up the Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Department as its new chief.
Glendale City Manager Yasmin Beers said during Fish’s retirement dinner on Wednesday that, when he first told her that he was thinking about applying for the position, she was stumped.
“How do you deal with that? How you get your thoughts together?” she said.
Beers said Fish was the best fire chief Glendale ever had and that he’d easily get the job in Carpinteria if he applied.
When he told her about possibly applying for the position, Fish said that if Beers said “no” he wouldn’t go through with it, she said. But she also knew he always wanted to retire in Santa Barbara County in order to be closer to his family.
“I told him, ‘go for it’,” Beers said.
She added she was happy for Fish for “attaining that dream sooner rather than later.”
Throughout his years with Glendale fire, Fish said he has seen a lot of changes at the department.
The vehicles went from being yellow to red, the equipment has gotten better and the personnel changed from baby boomers to Gen-Xers to millennials.
However, despite the changes, something has remained constant.
“There’s still an underlining theme of serving the public … to be the best we can possibly be for the community,” Fish said. “At the core of it all, there’s still the incentive to get out there and make a difference on a daily basis — that hasn’t changed at all.”
During his time as chief, Fish said he worked at having firefighters interact more with the Glendale community and have the department reflective of the city’s population.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Glendale’s population is 61% non-Hispanic white, 18.3% Hispanic or Latino, 16.3% Asian and 1.6% black. Around 52.2% of the city’s total population is women.
During Fish’s retirement party, Mayor Pro-tem Paula Devine pointed out that under his leadership, the department now has two female firefighters as well as two Korean-American and three Armenian-American firefighter/medics.
He also helped implement PulsePoint, Devine said, which is a cellphone app that provides real-time access to emergency activity as it’s occurring in the community and lets residents provide life-saving assistance to victims of sudden cardiac arrest, including alerting people nearby who have CPR training about an emergency situation.
During an earlier interview, Fish said the department still has a lot of work to do before it is truly representative of Glendale’s population. It’s the type of work that Fish says he has every confidence will be continued under the next chief, whoever that may be.
For now, Fish said he’s “overwhelmed with gratefulness” at being able to lead the department for the past three years.
“I’m just thankful to have been given this opportunity to not only be a Glendale firefighter, but to eventually be the chief,” he said.
Although he’ll miss Glendale and its residents, Fish did say there’s one thing he won’t miss at all after he leaves: the traffic.
At his retirement party, Deputy Chief Silvio Lanzas was joined by fellow Deputy Chief Bill Lynch, who also served as master of ceremonies, in a light-hearted presentation of items Fish might need in his new position in Carpinteria which is known as a beach community. Send-off gifts included sunglasses, sandals, a beach towel and an ice chest resembling a Glendale fire vehicle.
The program also included a slide-show video celebrating Fish’s career and his family. At one point, there were two side-by-side photos, with Fish beside the celebrity he resembles – Alec Baldwin – which brought a burst of laughter from the audience, who later, after Fish expressed his appreciation for the many people who have helped him professionally and personally, gave him a standing ovation.
Twitter: @Andy_Truc
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