{"id":44665,"date":"2021-09-15T22:26:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T04:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-farmingtion-fire-chief-says-hell-play-an-active-role-in-day-to-day-functions\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:20:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:20:25","slug":"new-farmingtion-fire-chief-says-hell-play-an-active-role-in-day-to-day-functions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-farmingtion-fire-chief-says-hell-play-an-active-role-in-day-to-day-functions\/","title":{"rendered":"New Farmingtion fire chief says he\u2019ll play an active role in day-to-day functions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Chief
Chief Robert Sterrett gets in one of the Farmington Fire Department's trucks. Sterrett recently became the new fire chief. (Morgan Mitchell\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Morgan Mitchell<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

FARMINGTON \u2013 The city of Farmington officially named Robert Sterrett as the new Farmington Fire Department chief.<\/p>\n

He replaces longtime chief David Burke, who worked with the department for 24 years. Before being named chief, Sterrett served in a temporary role as chief. He oversees six fire stations and more than 100 employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge responsibility to represent the city that I raise my children in, and have worked in,\u201d Sterrett said. \u201c\u2026 The leaders before me have created the department we see today, and that was by leaving it better than when they found it, which is my intention as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to do what I can to improve the safety of the citizens and what I can do to better the department so we can provide a top-notch fire department for the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sterrett said COVID-19 was a huge hindrance on training in addition to a few years of \u201ctough financial times\u201d that also affected training. So Sterrett said one of his main goals was to bring back training.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the components of outside training is perspective,\u201d Sterrett said. \u201cYou see how we do it, and how we train, but it doesn\u2019t really correlate to what the rest of the fire world is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Chief
Chief Robert Sterrett stands with one of the Farmington Fire Department\u2019s trucks. Sterrett recently became the new fire chief. (Morgan Mitchell\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Sterrett said he is looking at large departments like the Houston Fire Department or the Los Angeles Fire Department to see how they compare with the Farmington Fire Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy looking at that we can be sure that we\u2019re top-notch and staying with national trends,\u201d Sterrett said. \u201cSo it brings more credit to what we\u2019re doing here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another goal deals with the alternative response unit, which responds to low-threat 911 calls, and finding \u201cproactive\u201d ways to engage the demographics that generate the most calls. Sterrett said the current call volume is high.<\/p>\n

The department anticipates 16,000 to 17,000 calls for service this year. Educating community members about fire safety through its alternative response unit could help alleviate call volume, he said.<\/p>\n

Before becoming chief in Farmington, Sterrett worked as a volunteer at a fire department outside Fort Worth, Texas, and then moved to Farmington, where he was hired in 2005. He was on the wildfire team, engineer committee and tech rescue, and he has acted as engineer, lieutenant, captain, battalion chief, support services chief and deputy chief.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a very involved chief,\u201d he said. \u201cI like to go see how the guys are trained at the academy, I like to see guys working and have that, not so much connection, but trying to maintain an understanding of what is going on and what it\u2019s like while they\u2019re working. I try not to lose sight of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Community involvement is one of Sterrett\u2019s strong suits, and he credits his predecessor for teaching him.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the biggest things I learned from Chief Burke was how involved he was,\u201d Sterrett said. \u201cHe was involved in as many organizations and departments as he could. \u2026 So being able to work well with as many departments and maintain relationships, it just makes everything function at a higher level.\u201d<\/p>\n

mmitchell@durangoherald.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sterrett said he learned much from his predecessor, David Burke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[799,28,443],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-44665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-farmington","tag-headlines","tag-san-juan-county-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86175,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44665\/revisions\/86175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44665"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=44665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}