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Highland Village welcomes new fire chief; Tatum reflects on years of service
By Chris Roark, croark@starlocalnews.com
John Glover has been named the new fire chief for Highland Village, taking over for Lonnie Tatum, who will retire June 30.
The Highland Village City Council approved a resolution to make the appointment.
Glover comes to Highland Village from Coppell. He will begin work Monday.
An in-house panel selected the candidates and narrowed the pool to three applicants.
Glover’s swearing in will take place at 8 a.m. Monday at the Highland Village Municipal Complex.
Lonnie Tatum
Tatum, 64, has been Highland Village’s fire chief since 2001 after spending 32 years as the fire chief in Nacogdoches.
Among Tatum’s top accomplishments was providing the city with a full-time staff.
“When I first came on board, the city had an all-volunteer fire department, which is wonderful to have that many people volunteer,” Tatum said. “But sometimes because people have to work or had other commitments, we had a hard time keeping up with consistent staffing.”
Under Tatum’s tenure, Highland Village has become a full-time department, and 100 percent of the staff are certified firefighters and paramedics.
In 2008, Tatum also led the move from a temporary facility, to its current and more up-to-date building thanks to voter approval. The new building houses the city emergency center.
He helped bring in a new Pierce 1250 GPM Pumper engine and a new ACLS ambulance.
Tatum is also credited with bringing the city’s Insurance Service Offices (ISO) rating, a nationwide agency that grades fire departments’ ability to provide emergency services from a 5 to a 2. The rating scale goes from 1 to 10 with “1” being the best. A favorable rating helps lower homeowners’ insurance.
“Some of the things that are considered are water supply, full-time staffing, response time and equipment,” Tatum said. “A rating that good is difficult to achieve in such a small city.”
Tatum said creating the city’s Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) is another achievement he is proud of.
“One of my proudest accomplishments is the establishment of one of the first CERT teams here in Highland Village,” Tatum said. “This team went on to become the Denton County CERT team and is still active today throughout the state in hazard management and mitigation. The leader of the team, Brenda Gormley, was instrumental in the transition from the HVFD to Denton County Office of Emergency Management and recently received national recognition for her work in community emergency response.”
John Glover
Glover, 42, comes to Highland Village after spending 16 years as the deputy chief of operations in Coppell. Before that, he spent four years with the Jacksonville, Texas department.
While in Coppell, Glover was in charge of emergency operations, which encompassed fire, EMS, hazardous materials and technical rescue, such as rescue missions in trenches, high-angle areas, etc. He oversaw three stations and 78 personnel.
Glover has a bachelor’s degree in fire administration, is a graduate of the Texas Fire Chiefs Academy and was a participant of Fire Officer 4.
As far as accomplishments, Glover, too, has helped improve his fire department’s ISO. Coppell’s department had an ISO of 3 when he began the job, and it’s now at 1.
“One thing we did was improve our dispatch,” Glover said. “A lot of it also had to do with our cooperation with the water department to have a good water distribution system. Another major part of it was increasing the training and the emergency response capability of our fire department.”
Another achievement was the city’s technical rescue program.
“We were able to get the technical rescue program in a position to where it was a regional asset,” Glover said. “We get calls from other cities because of the strength of our training program.”
Looking ahead, Glover said he is anxious to continue what Tatum started in Highland Village.
“I want to continue the professionalism that he began in the Highland Village department,” Glover said. “There are a lot of professionals, with are a lot of younger people who have good ideas.”
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