The International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) installed Steven Westermann, fire chief of the Central Jackson County Fire Protection District in Blue Springs, Missouri, as its president during Fire-Rescue International in Atlanta. The installation ceremony was held the evening of Saturday, August 25, during the FRI Presidential Celebration.
As president, Chief Westermann will provide leadership to a 20-member board for the association located in Fairfax, Va., and will serve as the primary spokesperson for the association on matters of national and international interest. He will be called to testify at House and Senate hearings and is the representative dignitary for the association in all major political and international functions.
Chief Westermann has served as chief of department to the Central Jackson County Fire Protection District since 1988 and has been in the fire service since 1972. Prior to serving as a vice president, he served as the International Director for the Missouri Valley Division, president of the Missouri Valley Division and was on the IAFC’s NFPA 1710 Implementation Guide Task Force.
Westermann is the former chair of the National Policy Centers Task Force. He has served as president of both the Heart of America Kansas City Metro Fire Chiefs Council and the Missouri Association of Fire Chiefs. He has a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Missouri-KC, is an EFO graduate and a graduate of the Senior Executives in State and Local Government program at Harvard University.
Westermann plans to focus on enhancing current partnerships and seeking new. One such partnership is the Labor-Management Initiative (LMI), formerly known as the Leadership Partnership Initiative. The LMI provides training and best practices that bring together individual departments’ labor and management leaders to work together for a thriving, positive environment.
“An LMI workshop that I and my union counterpart attended in 2000 made a dramatic difference in our own department. For a time, the two sides in our department had been in the adversarial relationship, not untypical in the fire service. At the workshop, we looked at the baggage both sides were carrying, and we dropped it and started anew. The resulting atmosphere of trust and openness has enabled our department’s labor and management to accomplish many initiatives together and I want that for all departments.”
Additionally, Westermann is focusing efforts on growing the IAFC membership and creating more inclusiveness. He plans on investigating the potential of a new member classification more attuned to the needs of the company officer. “The most experienced members have retired or are nearing that time and newer members are still learning the basics, but without the frequent fire responses that seasoned their elders. Chiefs have a responsibility for succession planning in our departments: a responsibility to provide appropriate training, mentoring and preparation for company officers. I want them to have every opportunity to become successful fire chiefs.”
At the IAFC dinner, Chief Kelvin Cochran, fire chief of the Shreveport (LA) Fire Department was installed as first vice president and will succeed Westermann in 2008 as president of the IAFC. Janesville (WI) Fire Department Fire Chief Larry Grorud won a spring election to become the Association’s second vice president.
成立于1873年,International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) represents the leadership of over 1.2 million firefighters internationally. IAFC members are the world’s leading experts in fire fighting, emergency medical services, terrorism response, hazardous materials spills, natural disasters, search & rescue, and public safety legislation.
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