Fire department service seems to run in the Crawford family

Olivia Bradbury / Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

For Carbonear’s new Fire Chief Trevor Crawford, serving with the local volunteer brigade is a family affair.
Crawford was elected chief on February 12 along with the brigade’s new executive.
Born and raised in Carbonear, Crawford said he was inspired to pursue firefighting by his father, Tom Crawford, who has been a member of the department for 36 years and is himself a former fire chief.
“Growing up, as far as I can remember, he was in the fire department,” said Trevor. “When I was a kid I used to hang around a lot at the fire department and he’d be over there for functions and whatnot, so I just took an interest in it and when I was old enough I joined up.”
The new chief has served with the department for 16 years.
“It’s a great experience,” he said. “Getting to help people and doing the community good and stuff like that. It’s been all-around good, one of the best organizations I could ever imagine being a part of.”
It’s not Crawford’s first time on the executive. He has held the titles of lieutenant and captain, the latter for four years up to the recent election.
“I just decided to try to give the chief’s position a go,” said Crawford, who is an electrician by trade. “It was something I was interested in, and I actually wanted to do it before but due to work commitments and stuff and being away a lot of the time for work, I decided it wasn’t the right time. So, I gave it a lot of thought and figured now is as good a time as any to step up and give it a shot.”
Crawford is hoping to get as many training opportunities for his members as possible. He also wants the departmentt to train with other fire departments in the area.
“With mutual aid calls we will, from time to time, be working together with the other departments so it’s nice to also train with those people and get to know them and build up a relationship with the other departments, instead of the first time you’re ever running into them is at a fire scene one of these nights,” said Crawford.
The department has been doing a lot of training recently and has more scheduled in the near future. The department is also hosting a vehicle extrication course.
“I’m fresh into it now, only about a month in, so my first thing is trying to get this training stuff off the ground,” said Crawford, ”and it seems to be going good. There’s a pretty full schedule coming up.”