Fire chief part of network of support

Fire Chief Bob Anderson has been serving the citizens of Fire District 9 for 20 years, fighting fires, coordinating, hiring and helping to train volunteers and responding to emergencies.

He serves as the chairman of the County 911 policy board, and is the fire service representative on the Growth Management steering committee.

He has also been a part of American history in recent years.

As part of an Incident Command System he helped support emergency crews at Ground Zero in the weeks following Sept. 11, 2001. He aided support crews searching for the debris of the space shuttle Columbia. And he spent a month supporting emergency crews after Hurricane Katrina.

Originally set up to help teams fight wildfires, there are five types of teams involved in the Incident Command System, ranging from local to national emergencies. Anderson works on a type one team.

Type one responds to national disasters. Anderson completed his training in early 2001 and first responded to the 30-Mile Fire in Washington State.

Some of the activities the ICS coordinates during a disaster may include distributing water to rescuers, rounding up doctors, law enforcement and mortuaries, directing traffic and acting as a liaison between different agencies.

The weeks following Sept. 11 were filled with confusion and tragedy. Anderson said he received the call that he was to be deployed two hours after the tragedy happened.

He still finds it hard to talk about seeing the skyline of New York City burning and looking at the Statue of Liberty in the foreground.

“There was quite a lot of chaos,” he said.

The Fire Department of New York had lost their command infrastructure when the towers fell, and its emergency command center was gone.

“The devastation was pretty personally challenging,” he said.

Anderson said that there were almost too many people responding to the emergency and when the Incident Command System got into place, they were able to give the rescuers some breathing room.

The relationships he formed with members of the FDNY are still strong today.

Anderson first wanted to become a firefighter when his uncle was part of the volunteer fire fighter in Payette, Idaho. Every once in a while his uncle would let him ride on the little red fire engine.

When he got out of the military 33 years ago, he was hired at a fire house in Boise. His brother also became a fireman.

“It’s kind of the family business,” he joked.

He served in Boise until late 1986 when he was hired as the District 9 chief. Now that he’s part of the Incident Command System, he said that the fire house has been very supportive of him when he has to leave for periods of time that can range from two weeks to a month.

“I’ve been blessed,” he said. “These are good folks to work with.”

Anderson said that when disaster strikes he gets to see people at their best, doing what they can to help those that need it.

“The rewards outweigh the negative,” he said. “I’m part of the solution and not the problem, and that’s a very satisfying thing.”