Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency Director Tim Pellerin will wrap up a productive seven years in the position Fri., July 6.
Pellerin announced his resignation from the county June 18.
He will work his first day as Rangeley Fire Chief Tim Pellerin on July 9.
Pellerin is also Lincoln County’s Director of Communications, supervising about 20 people and a $3 million communications system in his dual roles.
Pellerin, 50, of Whitefield, will take 32 years of experience in firefighting and emergency management when he goes.
He was born and raised in Westbrook. His father was a firefighter and fire chief, and “as long as I could walk and talk my Dad started dragging me to the fire station,” he said. “As young as 7 years old, I can remember going on a fire call with my Dad.”
“It was ingrained into me,” Pellerin said. “I followed in my Dad’s footsteps. It just came natural to me. I was around it as a kid and everything I wanted to do was just to be a fireman.”
He began his professional firefighting career in Brunswick in 1980. He left for the Portland Fire Dept. in 1985, and the same year earned his state certification as a fire instructor. In 1990, he started teaching at Cumberland County Fire Attack School.
He was also a volunteer firefighter, holding various officers’ positions until becoming assistant fire chief and emergency management director of Raymond in 1994. He would later become the southwestern Maine town’s fire chief.
In 2001, he left Portland for a full-time gig as deputy fire chief and emergency management director in Westbrook; and, arriving in Lincoln County in 2005, he continued volunteering.
He resigned as Whitefield fire chief June 30, was a former officer with the Lincoln County Fire Chiefs Association, and served as former president of LCFCA’s Fire Academy.
Pellerin made a name for himself in Lincoln County as he raked in grant funds for various upgrades to county systems. Although he refuses to accept personal praise for these awards, he estimates the total grant funds his department has received during his tenure at approximately $1 million.
“I’ll take no credit for anything,” Pellerin said. With the exception of “turning on my light in the morning and shutting it off when I leave,” he couldn’t accomplish anything without the people he refers to, without fail, as his “team,” he said.
“We, together as a team, accomplish it all,” he said.
“I have a great team; great bunch of people, both on dispatch and the EMA side,” he said. “The operation works flawlessly.”
Despite his modesty, the evidence of the department’s progress is all around.
He led a massive upgrade of the county communications system, completing the transition from analog to a digital “microwave link” signal.
As recently as May, he announced the receipt of more than $100,000 in equipment, including a $55,000 decontamination trailer.
The Lincoln County Animal Response Team, the HazMat Decon (hazardous materials decontamination) Strike Teams, Incident Management Assistance Team and Search and Rescue Team are all products of Pellerin’s tenure.
Pellerin’s expertise has also paid off for county firefighters. He worked with the Alna Fire Dept. and the Fire Chiefs Association to secure a grant to purchase a live fire training simulator.
The $194,000 structure, a 2011 addition, stands in Wiscasset.
The simulator produces heat and smoke and allows firefighters to enter a variety of hypothetical indoor firefighting situations. It is the only simulator of its kind north of Massachusetts, Pellerin said at the time of the acquisition.
The municipal volunteer fire departments that train in Wiscasset at no cost today previously packed into vans for a long drive to New York to complete the same training.
The department has brought in countless smaller grants for equipment and safety training, among other things.
Pellerin said one of his chief goals in Lincoln County was to get all emergency personnel throughout the county “in the same room to train at the same level” and he has made significant progress toward that goal with large-scale drills and other training exercises.
Pellerin applauded the professionalism of the first responders in Lincoln County and said he would hold them up next to the first responders from any town he served, including those big, full-time departments in Brunswick, Portland and Westbrook.
Lincoln County first responders “step up to the plate every day, thousands and thousands and thousands of times a year,” he said. “They made my job easy.”
Not just Lincoln County, but also the entire U.S. has seen major changes in emergency management and firefighting since the beginning of Pellerin’s career.
In 1980, Pellerin said, a fire chief could outfit a new firefighter in hand-me-down gear, slap him on the back and welcome him aboard.
“Today you can’t do that,” he said. Instead, it takes 80 hours of training and costs $4000 before a firefighter can do anything, he said.
During the interview in his office, he gestured to a 17-volume set of thick paperback manuals on his bookshelf, the 2011 National Fire Codes. “Thirty years ago, none of those existed,” he said.
He acknowledges the necessity of the codes, but also the difficulty they impose on small volunteer fire departments. “It’s been a challenge for everybody in the fire service to keep up with this stuff,” he said.
It’s more of a challenge to recruit and retain volunteer firefighters, as young couples are more likely to work full-time and less likely to have jobs that allow them to respond to a page.
“I think people want to volunteer and people like to volunteer just like they did years ago,” Pellerin said. However, “in this day and age there aren’t many people who can give back because they’re just trying to make ends meet.”
Pellerin said he looks forward to starting work in Rangeley, a popular destination for hikers, kayakers and other outdoor enthusiasts where the mountainous terrain and waterways present a different set of challenges to emergency responders.
He said he’s vacationed in Rangeley in the past and has friends in the area. It was a friend who first told him about the job opening.
“A good opportunity presented itself and I decided to take it,” he said.
He said he works 60-90 hours per week in Lincoln County juggling his responsibilities to both departments and wants to slow down in what he said will be the last 10 years of his career.
His adult daughter lives in Rhode Island with his grandchildren, ages 3 and 4, and his son is a recent college graduate.
“I want to watch my grandkids grow up,” he said.
Pellerin said his assistant, Tod Hartung, will be named acting director. “He’ll do a good job,” he said.
He expects Whitefield to name Scott Higgins interim chief. Higgins announced his retirement from the position of deputy chief in May, but has since reconsidered, Pellerin said.
Pellerin will continue to live in Whitefield and commute to Rangeley for at least his first six months in the job. He’ll also remain available and willing to help at the fire academy or elsewhere.
Pellerin said he made lifelong friends in Lincoln County.
He thanked the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners for hiring him and said he appreciates the cooperation and friendship of everyone with whom he’s worked.
“I love this job,” Pellerin said. “It’s been a great job.”
