John Crosby Is Responder Of The Week

news1@ulyssesnews.com

John Crosby didn’t necessarily envision himself as the fire chief when the opportunity arose 30 years ago. He had been a firefighter in Grant County for a decade at that point and was the youngest person in the department.

Thirty years later, he’s the oldest person in the department with an eye on retirement in a few years. He joined the fire department 40 years ago at the encouragement of a friend.

“He told me I needed to get on the department, and so I did,” Crosby said. “And the rest is history.

“I didn’t really want to be chief when I became chief.”

The officers at the time were leaving and said, “Who else is going to do it?”

“So, they kind of told me, ‘You’re going to do it,’” Crosby added. “I was a little scared at first, but it’s been fine.”

The biggest change he’s seen in his time on the front lines has been the equipment available to firefighters.

“It’s so much better than it was, it’s like night and day between what it was 40 years ago and what it is now,” Crosby said. “It’s so much better.”

The training today is more comprehensive than it was, because the technology has advanced. Air packs are lighter and last longer than before.

“The training back then wasn’t near as detailed as it is now,” Crosby said. “It was more of the basics (then), learning how to run the pump. It was one or two pumps, you learned those you could run anything.

“Now, it’s a little different. The pumps are a little more complicated.”

In rural America, firefighters have to know a little of everything.

“We’re not like the city where they have specialized people that do this and that,” Crosby said. “We have to know all that, so there’s a lot more training that goes on in these different areas.”

Crosby said an important difference between then and now has been the cooperation between the different agencies – Police, sheriff, EMS.

“We really didn’t get along real well for some reason,” Crosby said. “We got all that fixed, so we work real well together now.”

The best thing about being a firefighter is the camaraderie amongst the crew and the teamwork, Crosby said.

“And we get to help people,” he added. “On their worst day, we gotta make it better, hopefully better.

“How many jobs can you do where you get to help people like that?”

Crosby said he has worked major incidents over four decades in Grant County and most have been weather-related – dust storms, snowstorms, ice storms, etc.

“We’ve had bad accidents, but the ones, to me, that stand out is when we have really bad weather and we have to go out in it and do our job,” Crosby said. “When you’re in the middle of it, you’re wondering ‘What am I doing here? How do we get out of this without anybody getting hurt?’

“When you’re in the middle of a dust storm and you can’t see five feet in front of you and you’re having to go out and help people in car wrecks and stuff like that, it becomes extremely dangerous, and you have to deal with that and watch each other’s backs.”

The goal is everybody goes home at the end of the day, he added.

“So far we’ve been pretty lucky with that,” Crosby said. “But that’s our main goal is everybody keep safe while they’re doing their job.”

Crosby was instrumental in getting new equipment such as a pumper truck which, as a bonus, is also a ladder truck. The truck was gently used – just 6,000 miles on it - and Crosby got it at a reasonable price from a department in Ohio. A new vehicle would have cost double what he got the used one for. The truck will fulfill the department’s needs for the next 15 year.

“The problem is our equipment is getting so high-tech, it’s becoming very expensive and it’s hard for us to afford to continually upgrade our services,” Crosby said. “And with our budget problems here, it’s becoming harder. We have to start looking at trying to get grants and stuff to help pay for stuff.”

Training requirements are starting to become more stringent.

“It’s hard for the firefighters,” Crosby said. “Those guys have jobs and for them to spend the time they need to spend to get all that training, it’s hard.”

And it’s more difficult to get people to want to be a first responder, whether it be fire, EMS or law enforcement.

“Recruiting is starting to become a little bit tougher because of the time requirements,” Crosby added. “We have three meetings a month, two of those are training, one is business, so we basically go through all the trucks and equipment, make sure nothing’s broke.”

As far as his future, Crosby said he plans to retire in two or three years.

“I’ll probably be retiring within the next three years,” he said.

And when John Crosby goes, his wife Terry Crosby also goes. The two have been married 44 years, and Terry is a full-time paramedic and the safety officer for the fire department.

Look for Terry’s story in next week’s Responder of the Week feature.

“The best part has been the people,” Crosby said. “I’ve had firefighters who have gone on to become full-time firefighters, and I’m proud of that.

“It’s been good, I wouldn’t change anything.”

If you have a nominee for Responder of the Week, email news1@ulyssesnews.com or call (620) 356-1201.