City of Alpena’s New Fire Chief Takes Over
Along with a new police chief, Alpena’s new fire chief is also in action.
City of Alpena’s new Fire Chief Rob Edmonds, described his feeling on his promotion. “For me it’s something I never imagined would be possible when I started my career back in 1988 as a volunteer,” he said. “I never thought that one day I would be the chief of the Alpena Fire Department, a career fire department, so for me it’s kind of surreal. It’s definitely not something that you really plan for but you always prepare for, so it’s a good feeling though, especially being born and raised in the Alpena area and being able to stay here and it’s actually it’s very good feeling to be here.”
As the reins are passed on to the Edmonds from former chief Bill Forbush, the department will continue to maintain the standards of excellence while continuing to improve in other ways. “Well Chief Forbush, with his 12 years here as our fire chief, you know he took us forward in a lot of ways so it’s good to see that we can be progressive, you know, even though we’re a small town fire department in our EMS and fire provisions of what we give to the community,” he said. “We’ve been able to expand that over the years and I am hopefully able to continue that so Chief Forbush gave us good footing.”
With the changing of the guard, new ideas and perspectives will take over, and Chief Edmonds is excited to get the new ideas in place, while also continuing to take care of the community. “I would say, you know, I think it’s gonna be a good transition for the community,” Edmonds said. “Obviously, it’s always good to have a new perspective and a new look from a different position and different set of eyes on it. There will be some things that we do a little bit different than maybe Chief Forbush did in the past, but we’re really looking at excellence in service to the community, making sure that what we say we do we can actually do so in our fire and our EMS provisions to the city and the county.”
Bill Forbush, officially retired on December 15, 2022.
