After his June 2 election by fire department members and June 15 appointment by the Wiscasset Board of Selectman, Rob Bickford Jr., a 22-year veteran of the Wiscasset Volunteer Fire Dept., is the town’s new fire chief.
Bickford, a resident of Wiscasset since age two, credits longtime Chief Tim Merry for making the transition easy. “Most everything around here runs really smooth, thanks to Chief Merry,” Bickford said. “It’s a good group of people. We all work well together and everyone knows what to do.”
“I don’t see any real big changes right off,” Bickford said. Sweeping changes might not be necessary, but Bickford already faces a problem, and it’s a local and national one. “I think our biggest challenge right now is recruiting new members,” he said.
“Volunteerism across the country is way down over the last 10 or 15 years,” Bickford said. “It’s especially prevalent in the volunteer fire service with all the added mandates and the trainings that everybody has to have every year.”
“It becomes a big time constraint,” Bickford said. “People with families and one or two jobs, they just can’t seem to commit the time that it takes, but I do hope to recruit some new members,” he said.
For now, Bickford said, Wiscasset is fortunate that many members work nearby for flexible employers that allow them to respond to daytime calls. “[In] surrounding towns, they’re hard-pressed to get enough people to roll a truck out of the barn during the day,” he said. “Their numbers are good at night and on the weekends, but during the day is when it really shows up the most.”
Bickford himself works full-time across the street from the station as a 911 dispatcher and supervisor at Lincoln County Communications. The satisfaction he feels as a firefighter carries over into his day job.
“The biggest part is the feeling of knowing that you’re helping somebody else when they need it the most,” he said. “I think that’s why I do my full-time job, too. It all goes together with helping other people.”
Hopefully Wiscasset can avoid the big blazes Bickford recalls during his firefighting career. Bickford described a 1994 fire at Sheepscot Pottery on Main Street. “It started in a kiln in the back,” he said. Two 100-pound propane tanks in the rear of the building fired the kiln. “It was kind of hairy for a little while,” Bickford said. “We kept those cool.”
Although the building sat “right in the middle of the block,” Bickford said firefighters successfully protected the fire from spreading.
Another epic fire destroyed the Marriner Lumber building (now Hancock Lumber) on Rt. 27 in the early ’90s. “It was actually the old railroad station from Water Street that they had moved out there,” Bickford said. “That was a big fire.”
“We were worried that the lumberyard was gonna catch on fire,” he said. “It totally destroyed the building itself but we were able to save all the wood surrounding it.”
In the downtime between saving neighborhoods from disastrous infernos, the department finds time for fun and camaraderie. “In the summertime we like to do musters,” Bickford said. Every year, Wiscasset competes with several local departments at the Phippsburg Field Day.
“Usually it consists of four events,” Bickford explained. In one competition, called “dry hose,” each team starts with “three rolled-up sections of hose and a nozzle.”
“You’re timed on rolling out the three lengths of hose, connecting them, putting the nozzle on, putting the other end on a hydrant, charging the line with water and hitting a target with the hose,” Bickford said.
“It really shows how well departments get along with each other,” Bickford said. “We go out and run some races and have a good time.”
