There's a new fire chief in Sioux Lookout.
Council passed a bylaw last week to hire Jeremy Funk as the new fire chief and manager of emergency services for the municipality.
Funk, a long-time member of the volunteer staffed fire service, said it was a great honour to get the appointment.
“I've been a member of this fire department for going on 12 years and I've moved up from just a firefighter, to a training officer, to a captain, and now fire chief,” he said in an interview. “It's been an experience for sure, getting here. I really enjoyed it. It's nice for me to be able to get back to the community now in the big chair, so to speak.”
Funk said he grew up in Winnipeg, but has lived in Sioux Lookout permanently for nearly two decades. He left his full-time position at the municipality working as the road foreman in the public works department for the appointment.
Funk said he considers the Sioux Lookout Fire Service a paid on-call service.
“Nobody here is a volunteer in the truest sense of the word. The firefighters here are all trained and they serve as employees in this reality. They obviously have full time jobs, but when the call comes in, [residents] get definitely trained firefighters who are paid to be on call,” he said. “We have an on-call rotation that works every six weeks.”
He said staffing is one of the biggest challenges he will need to work on.
“It's challenging to recruit and retain firefighters here,” he said. “Fire departments all over all across Canada are experiencing declines in their numbers.”
Another task Funk said he has to manage is working in new provincial legislative training requirements like mandated certification standards.
“A lot of our existing firefighters, we've applied for legacy applications for them to acknowledge their years of service,” he said. “We have a good group that's committed to their training and they're moving along towards that end goal very successfully.”
Funk said his appointment was retroactive to March 3 and that he’s been working in the capacity for a couple of weeks.
“I met with all of my managerial counterparts in the other departments for the municipality over the last two weeks, from the airport, to finance and public works. They've all been really supportive because I've been an employee of the municipality for the last seven years, we've had interaction before,” he said.
“I have positive relationships with all of them and I look to build on those and expand our interactions through my new role.”
He also said in his role as manager for emergency services, he’s looking at ways to bring groups together as a facilitator for emergencies.
“That's really exciting for me to be involved in these higher level meetings,” he said.
Funk thanked Robert Favot, the retired former long-time fire chief of Sioux Lookout, who stepped back into the role in an interim capacity.
“Rob has been great,” he said. “Obviously, I worked with him for the bulk of my firefighting career. He was instrumental to get a lot of the training that I got. So I can't thank him enough.”
Funk said Favot has helped him with learning a lot about the administrative duties that goes into making the fire department run.
“That's been a pretty big learning curve, but it's a challenge that I'm eager to undertake,” he said. “We've already made some good strides and some of my goals which have been well received in the community. That's very positive feedback for me.”
Funk said he’s a big believer that public education and fire prevention are the first two pillars in the line of defense.
“Already this week, I've had to public engagements. I met with some young kids through the spring break program at the library and was able to engage them with fire safety messages appropriate for for their age and demographics,” he said. “And just this [Friday] morning, I was actually at a daycare. Kindergarten kids just getting used to seeing firefighters and teach them that we're not going to be scared of, should we ever end up in their homes.”
