New fire chief discusses job, goals

Idaho Falls Fire Chief Duane Nelson is no stranger to the Idaho Falls Fire Department. He joined the department in 1997. He served as interim chief for about five months five years ago before former chief Dave Hanneman was hired. He says the station is more established now than it was when he was interim chief.

“With that growth came lots of challenges,” Nelson said. “And those challenges didn’t cease when Chief Hanneman left. And so what we’re trying to do as a new staff, and a command staff and as a department is to reorganize those goals.”

One of his first duties as chief is to work on the budget for the year. He says they are looking at operations and how to best use their resources.

“We’re looking hard at the service delivery that we provide,” Nelson said. “How to best do that under that financial constraints or what the community wants as they pay us taxes to provide us service.”

He is also getting the department ready for the upcoming wildland fire season. He says state and federal partners rely on municipalities to help them run fire operations.

“That is due to those federal and state partners don’t have the resources annually to be able to run fire service or fire protection during the whole year,” he said. “And so they really rely on our help to offset those during these time of year.”

One of Nelson’s personal goals as a chief is to focus on behavioral health issues for first responders.

“We have issues in public safety right now and emergency services with behavioral health issues,” he said. “Not necessarily that our employees are dealing with behavioral health issues, it’s more of trying to deal with PTSD and how to live a healthy emotional and physical life away from the job.”

Nelson is also a firefighter with the Idaho Army National Guard. He plans to retire from the military this summer.