Teamwork was the catalyst behind Erin Williams’s decision to become a firefighter – and it’s the approach he plans to take in his job as fire chief.
Williams has been selected as the new chief of the New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services. A longtime New West resident, Williams joined the fire department in August 1995.
“I’d just really like to emphasize what a diverse group of people we have working here, with such an amazing skill set,” he told the Record. “We’re really looking forward to watching our staff grow, both professionally and personally. It’s that whole sense of team – I really do believe that starts with our management team and works right through the organization.”
Born in New Westminster, Williams moved to 100 Mile House with his family as a child and returned to the city when he was about 18. As someone who had always played team sports, Williams said he valued the concept of team – and saw the need for teamwork in firefighting, first, during his three years of work with the BC Wildfire Service, and later with New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services.
“I’ve really valued that aspect of my career – what a great team and family we are,” he said.
Now in his 28th year with the New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services, Williams has served in most roles within the department.
“When I look back at my career, I think that really helped me understand and develop relationships in each of the departments, and understand how they’re all linked together,” he said.
Williams’ roles have included working as a firefighter, a lieutenant on the rescue truck, a captain, a member of the fire prevention lowrise task force, a battalion chief and chief training officer. In 2018, he moved into management, becoming an assistant deputy chief of operations and then the assistant deputy chief of fire prevention and public safety.
In January 2022, Williams was appointed acting fire chief, following staff departures. During his time as acting chief, Williams said he has worked to improve morale, build better relationships with the union, and create a safe and positive work environment where people can work on their professional growth.
“We needed to get back to building a foundation of trust with our union executive, and really letting our members know that we’re there to support them and that we’re all working for the same cause,” he said. “And I think we really did make a lot of strides in that quite quickly.”
Because he didn’t know how long he would be in the chief’s role, Williams said he didn’t think it was fair to the organization to start making large-scale changes before a new chief was named.
“So we just made incremental changes; things that we’ve kind of always thought would be a better way to do these things, especially when it comes to training and community outreach,” he said. “We really did a lot of focus on those two areas.”
Now that he’s officially been named as New Westminster’s new fire chief, Williams said he’s in a position to make some longer term plans for the department. Work has already begun on building a new four-year fire master plan.
“That’ll include taking a good look at the service that we provide the community, any improvements we can make there. We will take a good look and see if the resources that we have match the growth that we’ve seen in our community,” he said. “When I look at how our community has changed in the last even 10 years, I think we haven’t kept pace with that as a department. We’ve done well in providing a great service for the community, but I think we need to really look at how we can strengthen that.”
New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services has 92 unionized staff who work in fire suppression and fire prevention; it also has 10 union exempt staff, which includes the chief, deputy chief and assistant deputy chiefs and clerical staff in fire administration.
Some of Williams’ other priorities include filling a deputy chief vacancy in the NWFRS senior management team and ensuring the management team is structured in a way that makes sure their portfolios are equitable.
Williams, a Glenbrooke North resident, said he’s committed to ensuring the city provides a professional and equitable service to the community.
“We’re committed, also, to aligning our strategic priorities with that of the mayor and council, and really making sure that our community has the best value that they possibly can for emergency services with their tax dollars,” he said.
Another area of focus is on emergency management – one of the areas where Williams has seen the most change during his firefighting career.
“When I first started, it was really a siloed organization that responded to fire-related calls or motor vehicle incidents, and rarely got into different areas of community safety, like an emergency management,” he said of the department. “Emergency management has probably been the biggest change, and that’s something that we oversee here as well.”
On that front, Williams said the fire department needs to make sure the city is equipped to respond to situations like the heat dome and extreme weather events. Last year, the fire department trained more than 90 city staff last year in the operations of the city’s emergency operations centre.
“When we activated for the pandemic … we had an emergency operations centre activated with no staff to operate it really other than fire staff,” he said. “One of the things we learned from that – not only that but the heat dome – is that when big events happen, the fire department tends to be operationally involved. And that leaves no one to staff an emergency operations centre unless you have other staff in the city and other departments who are skilled in that as well.”
Williams said it’s “amazing” to be the fire chief in the town where he’s lived for many years and raised his family.
“I enjoy our community; it’s such a great place to live and raise kids,” he said. “I’m pretty passionate about it, so it makes my job a lot easier when you’re invested in your community.”
What folks are saying
Shane Poole, president New Westminster Firefighters IAFF Local256, supports the city’s choice of a new fire chief.
“Absolutely pleased that the position has been filled, and the union is happy Erin has been appointed the new fire chief,” he said in a statement to the Record. “We look forward to continuing to work collaboratively with him and the rest of the management team.”
Mayor Patrick Johnstone said Williams has brought some positive changes to the department while serving as acting fire chief.
“There is a new spirit of teamwork and a really a market shift in morale in our fire service with him as chief,” he said. “I think that he’s done a lot of work to rebuild relationships between fire service and management in the fire service. He’s just brought a really positive attitude. He’s been really progressive.”
Johnstone said Williams is “a firefighters’ firefighter” and is taking a really taking a proactive role in the department’s work. He said Williams is taking a proactive approach in emergency management and is making sure the city’s emergency management office is connecting with residents in a better way.
Johnstone said city council communicated to the chief administrative officer the characteristics it wanted to see in a fire chief, but it was not directly involved in the selection process.
“There’s a really positive energy in the three fire halls right now,” he said. “He’s also a really progressive guy. He really knows how to communicate the needs of the fire department to council, and he just seems really good at relationship-building in the community. He is a New Westie. He’s a guy who lives in New Westminster and really cares about the community.”
