Rocky View County has welcomed its new Fire Chief, Ken Hubbard, into its ranks. The announcement was made on Tuesday, December 13 by Mayor Crystal Kissel during a Council meeting, following the retirement of Fire Chief Randy Smith. 

“The County and Fire Services is fortunate to be transitioning from one great leader to another. Chief Hubbard has made a career out of learning, mentoring, empowering others and serving the community. We have every confidence in his new appointment as Rocky View County Fire Chief," Mayor Kissel said.  

However, Chief Hubbard's name may be familiar to Airdronians, as he spent 17 years in Airdrie's Fire Department as the Deputy Chief of Training and Fire Prevention before he joined Rocky View 18 months ago. Hubbard who has three-and-a-half decades of fire service under his belt, remarked that many of the challenges that the county faces are challenges he observed in Airdrie when the fire department was still in its growing stages.  

"One of the larger challenges is going to be keeping up with the recruitment process and succession planning of our members to help grow them," Chief Hubbard said. "We do have a large portion of our members who have been here for some time and we are growing, some are moving on. So, it's keeping up with those succession plans to make sure we have enough members to respond to the emergencies as required." 

Chief Hubbard, who is also the Regional Director of the Alberta Fire Chiefs Association, became the Deputy Fire Chief of Rocky View County in May 2022. He said that there have been discussions with his Fire Chief counterparts on the issue of fire crews waiting longer on-scene when attending co-medical calls - calls to which both fire departments and AHS EMS are dispatched to. He noted that in general, there have been instances where fire crews are waiting longer, which can be troubling for rural communities with smaller departments, whose members are paid on call. 

"There has been progress [in those discussions]. I can only speak to Rocky County; we've had a few times where there have been longer wait times than we normally would associate," he said. "That's usually based on the time of calls and the number of calls that are going on in the area." 

Chief Hubbard is looking at several strategic initiatives within the county. He harkened back to a few key mandates that were identified in the Fire Master Plan, in which there are service levels to be looked at. 

"We're also looking at recruitment and retention of our volunteer and our full-time members. A big part of that is going to be succession planning, making sure that we have the right people in the right seats when we have retirements," he said. "[We're] also going to look at making sure that long-range planning for stations in areas are building out and being developed are in the right areas." 

Recently, as part of its annual recruitment process, Rocky View County Fire Services announced it was looking to fill several paid-on-call firefighter positions in the county, with a deadline of December 18. 

However, Chief Hubbard's 35 years of service started when he was very young. As a child, he became a fan of the 1970s hit action-adventure show Emergency! The series followed two paramedics who worked as firefighters and paramedics in L.A.  

"It's something that really stuck in my mind of it being a true calling. I suppose a passion of mine was to be a part of that," he said. "I had the opportunity as a volunteer when I was 20 years old to join the Airdrie volunteer fire department at that time. Working with the community, it was amazing to spend time with the great people." 

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Chief Hubbard's fascination with the show is that a fellow Fire Chief was also partly inspired by a similar medical drama series. In previous interviews, Chief Pirie cited Rescue 911, a 1980s docudrama series hosted by William Shatner as something that sparked his own fascination with a career in first response. 

"[Chief] Mike Pirie was one of the students that I had when I was a medic in Airdrie. It's very encouraging to see people that you've worked with over a number of years be very successful and move up through the ranks and help lead organizations as I am doing in Rocky County." 

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