{"id":47928,"date":"2021-03-17T18:13:01","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T00:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmington-fire-chief-retiring\/"},"modified":"2021-03-18T00:13:01","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T00:13:01","slug":"farmington-fire-chief-retiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmington-fire-chief-retiring\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmington fire chief retiring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"After
After almost 24 years serving the community as a member of the Farmington Fire Department, Chief David Burke will retire at the end of March.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

FARMINGTON \u2013 After almost 24 years serving the community as a member of the Farmington Fire Department, Chief David Burke will retire at the end of March.<\/p>\n

Burke started working at the Farmington Fire Department in 1997 after working a few years in the Durango area. He has been chief of the Farmington department for a little more than three years.<\/p>\n

Burke said he was retiring so he could focus on some other areas in his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve accomplished the goals that I set out to accomplish here,\u201d Burke said. \u201cI\u2019m going to focus on some more personal components and my marriage and some travel opportunities coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burke said one of his goals that he met had to do with a COVID-19 task force and the homeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOVID was a very challenging year for everybody,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is such an amazing community, all the resources and the people who came together to help the community transition through that challenging time, I felt that being part of that group, was one of the best experiences of my career \u2013 of my life. And I feel we were very successful in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Farmington
Farmington Fire Chief David Burke stands behind his desk. He will retire at the end of the month.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

City Manager Rob Mayes said in a statement that he thanked Burke for his \u201ctireless effort\u201d during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the past 12 months, Chief Burke has been assiduous in leading our internal COVID task force while also juggling his regular duties,\u201d Mayes said. \u201cWe will miss having him as part of our leadership team but wish him well on the next chapter of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next chapter, Burke said, after traveling would be to find some other hurdle to overcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point, with some travel, some reflection internally, and some time with my loved ones, I\u2019d love to facilitate some additional challenges down the road,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m done working. I think I need to find something to do to keep my hands busy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"One
One of Farmington Fire Department Chief David Burke&#x2019;s few office possessions, Lego firefighters, are displayed on a shelf.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Burke also does some federal work on the side for disaster response, where he said he hadn\u2019t been able to be as active as he wanted, but now he will be able to be more involved.<\/p>\n

Looking back over his calls through the years, Burke said any first responder will remember certain calls their whole lives.<\/p>\n

One call he could never forget involved a child.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen the child several times since that incident, and it does the heart good to see them recover and run around being a child, or, well, at this point, an adult,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best part about this job, I think, is looking at problems from a different perspective,\u201d Burke said. \u201cYou\u2019re elbow deep in the ashes or whatever the scenario is. At this point in my career and over the last several years, I\u2019ve been able to look at it from a different angle and more \u2018how can we serve the community as a whole\u2019 rather than just respond to specific incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the last year, Burke said the department worked with the Farmington Police Department, the Department of Health and Presbyterian Medical Services along with others to bring awareness and create a homeless shelter to help serve the community.<\/p>\n

\"Farmington
Farmington Fire Chief David Burke will retire at the end of March.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Burke conducted research and he said he found the Farmington area was more susceptible to community spread of the novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery challenge creates opportunity, so having the challenges associated with COVID or any part of public safety, we always look at our resources to see how we can better serve the community and be better prepared for large-scale events,\u201d Burke said.<\/p>\n

Robert Sterrett, who has worked in the department for the last 15 years and has worked closely with Burke over the last three years, will become the interim chief.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt every level in the organization, there\u2019s some sort of mentorship, whether you\u2019re a new fireman being mentored by a senior fireman,\u201d Sterrett said. \u201cSo the last three years have been amazing to have Chief Burke as a mentor and guide me through some of the challenges and hurdles of administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sterrett said Burke helped him understand people better and boost confidence in his intuition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know I will always have his support, and I know that if I ever need anything, he will help me, but it\u2019s almost like having a security when he\u2019s here,\u201d Sterrett said.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Farmington
Farmington Fire Chief David Burke says he will miss the excellence and professionalism of department&#x2019;s firefighters.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Several years ago during Christmastime, a home burned down, and Burke said the captain at that responding fire station and his crew went above and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat crew stepped up out of their own pockets, and bought them presents and food,\u201d he said. \u201cThose kinds of things are what stick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burke said he would miss the resilience and excellence of the FFD team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe employees, the firefighters, engineers and officers here are an amazing group of people, and they always look for opportunities to exceed expectations. And that\u2019s going to be the hardest thing,\u201d said Burke, choking up. \u201cThat will be what I miss the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

served in department for 24 years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[799,350,28,138,29,443],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-farmington","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-new-mexico","tag-newsletter","tag-san-juan-county-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47928","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=47928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47928"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}