By Charly SHELTON

Last month, Greg Fish was named as the City of Glendale’s new fire chief. Fish was officially appointed as GFD chief after serving five months in an interim capacity following the departure of Harold Scoggins, who left Glendale to take the reins of fire chief of Seattle. Fish was officially appointed at the Glendale City Council meeting on Sept. 1 and has had some time to get used to his official role.

Now that he has had some time to adjust to his new position, Fish said the job title won’t change his plans much. There are certain goals and programs that he had started and sustained, which he now has the freedom to pursue more wholly.

“I’m going to reenergize my priorities,” said Fish. “I still kept a lot of the stuff that we wanted to move forward, like the Community Paramedic Program, but a lot of the stuff was on hold. [I didn’t want to] create a program that wouldn’t be sustained by the future fire chief if it was someone other than me. Now that I have the position, I have a vision of where I want to go and some of the things that I want to do. I’m really excited that I have the wheel in my hands and I can steer the ship in any direction.”

One of his most ambitious goals is making GFD an organization of leaders. Through training and mentoring, Fish said, more people within the department will have the ability to move up if they so choose. This is important for the infrastructure of the department and will make the organization better as a whole.

“I think there are a lot of intangible things that the public is not going to see, but things that we’re going to deal with in the fire department,” Fish said.

One of the first orders of business for the new chief is making sure there are enough recruits for next year’s class. He urges anyone in the community, whether Glendale or a neighboring city, who may be curious about firefighting to get more information and get involved by calling (818) 548-4814.

  Charly Shelton