Fire chief candidates start their meet-and-greet

The seven men competing for command of the Charleston Fire Department, as it rebuilds from the tragic 2007 Sofa Super Store fire, met for the first time with City Council members who will vote upon Mayor Joe Riley's eventual nominee for the job.

The veteran firefighting officials, all of them current or former leaders in departments in other states, spend 90 minutes talking in small groups with council members and making brief statements during a luncheon Monday at the Francis Marion Hotel. The seven were hand-picked after a national search that attracted 141 applicants.

After the get-together, several City Council members said the candidates all seemed to be well-qualified, as Riley had promised, and there's no one candidate that clearly overshadows the rest.

"I don't think that the deck was stacked," said Councilman Larry Shirley, referring to speculation that there's a clear favorite.

On Friday, after the finalists names were released by the city late in the afternoon, Fire Chief magazine editorial director Janet Wilmoth said she thought one candidate, Thomas Carr, was a clear standout.

"It sounds like a stacked deck to me," Wilmoth said, in comments The Post and Courier reported Saturday.

Carr, 54, is in charge of 2,200 professional and volunteer firefighters as chief of the Montgomery County (Md.) Fire and Rescue Service. Commanders from Charleston attended training sessions with Carr's department after the Sofa Super Store blaze in West Ashley killed nine city firefighters and exposed systemic problems within the Charleston Fire Department.

Carr was born in Charleston, his parents have homes downtown and on Sullivan's Island, and his father is a Citadel graduate, but he's not the only candidate with local ties.

Jamie Geer, chief of Clearwater (Fla.) Fire and Rescue, grew up on James Island and was a firefighter with the James Island and Mount Pleasant fire departments until 1980, when he left for a larger department in Atlanta.

Councilman Gary White said he thinks Charleston firefighters will need to be able to relate to the next chief, and he thinks they would relate well to someone from James Island who was a local firefighter for years.

In Clearwater, Geer has drawn the ire of the firefighters union and a raft of grievances, which Geer said resulted from significant changes he was hired to make in the department after a Clearwater fire that killed several residents and seriously injured five firefighters.

"As a change-agent fire chief, change is difficult and not everyone agrees with it," Geer said in an interview after the luncheon.

Jerry Oldani, a consultant hired to conduct the national fire chief search, made a similar comment Friday when asked about the controversial backgrounds of several candidates.

"When people are change agents, there always will be a certain percentage of people that are going to have an opinion," he said.

One of the candidates trailed by controversy is William Goodwin, who retired last fall as chief of the Baltimore Fire Department. He stepped down in the wake of the February 2007 death of a firefighting cadet during a live-burn training exercise.

Councilman Aubry Alexander said he's spent hours researching the candidates, and pointed out Monday that Goodwin was out of the country when the cadet died.

Goodwin made the same point in an interview after the luncheon, and said he pushed for an independent investigation of the incident.

"There's blame and accusations and everything that goes along with it," he said. "I'm sure the union president (in Baltimore) doesn't agree with me, but leadership is dangerous."

Alexander is a member of City Council's Public Safety Committee, which will conduct jobs interviews with the candidate Tuesday. A committee picked by Riley will also interview the candidates, and both committees will provide their impressions to the mayor, who has the authority to nominate the next chief.

"They all brought something to the table," Alexander said of the candidates.

The candidates for fire chief, in addition to Carr, Geer and Goodwin, are:

--Richard Brannon, deputy chief of the Mobile (Ala.) Fire-Rescue Department. Mobile, a sister-city to Charleston, has 20 fire stations serving a 210-square-mile area, roughly twice the size of Charleston. Brannon is also a Lt. Commander in the Coast Guard Reserve, who said he oversaw the decontamination of equipment and personnel at the World Trade Center site after 9/11, and was responsible for the recovery operation for more than 500 commercial vessels after Hurricane Katrina.

--Larry Collins, retired director and chief of the Dayton (Ohio) Fire Department. Collins was with the department for 30 years, having worked his way up from paramedic. He was at various times the department's training officer and hazmat coordinator, and as chief oversaw a $37 million budget.

--John Rukavina, retired director of public safety for Wake County (N.C.). Rukavina opted for a career in the fire service while in law school, but still earned his law degree. He has worked as a city manager as well as a fire chief, and while working in Asheville (N.C.) helped facilitate a program aimed at improving race relations.

--Thomas Solberg, chief of the Lee's Summit (Mo.) Fire Department. Solberg was appointed Fire Chief in 2000, and served as the local union president for nine years before going into management. He has been in the fire service for 30 years.