This is a summation from our website posting.

At the board of directors meeting on August 11th, 2021, the board of the Nederland Fire Protection District voted 3-2 (Iain Irwin-Powell – Y, Todd Wieseler – Y, Henry Zurbrugg - N, Ray Willis – N, Guy Falsetti – Y) to terminate the employment of Fire Chief Rick Dirr after a vote of no-confidence that passed 4-1 (Iain Irwin-Powell – Y, Todd Wieseler – Y, Henry Zurbrugg - N, Ray Willis – Y, Guy Falsetti – Y).

This decision was not taken lightly. The department has been in turmoil for many years and in the last year 75% of senior staff have departed along with several very experienced volunteers. The department needs to change direction and become, first and foremost, the department in which volunteers wish to serve and, secondly, the department that this district deserves. It is the opinion of those who voted to remove the Chief that this cannot happen under the current leadership.

In the next week the board will be doing several things. We will be investigating appointing an interim Chief and will start a national search for a new Chief. We expect the process of finding a new Chief will take 3-6 months. We intend to fill our open shift position shortly to bring us up to full operational strength.

We appreciate that wildland fire season will present another set of challenges along with our usual emergency services workload and we have complete confidence that our staff and volunteers are completely capable of managing any incidents.

Any comments can be directed to admin@nfpd.org