New MI Chief Wants to Add to Ranks

DAVISON, MI – Brian Flewelling is Davison through and through.

The 41-year-old Davison native has been a member of the city’s fire department since 1996 and worked for the Department of Public Works for 13 years.

A 1995 Davison High School graduate, Flewelling took over this month as chief of the Davison-Richfield Fire Department that spans 72 square miles between Davison, Richfield Township, and Davison Township, replacing Mike Wright who’d served in the position for 18 years prior to his retirement in September 2018.

“I love this town. Everything about it. I can tell you who used to live at the house at the corner of Genesee and Third Street,” said Flewelling of his connection with the city and what’s kept him on the department. “The community, just the love for doing it…and the other people here, the men and women that are here. Just the guy next to you, really you don’t want to let them down.”

His path to the fire service began with friends whose father was a fire chief with the department in the late 1990s.

“That kind of got me wrapped up into it,” said Flewelling, seated behind a desk in his office at the fire station off Main Street, just south of downtown Davison.

His first fire came on the opening of firearm deer hunting season in 1996 when a hot tub malfunctioned and set the back of a home ablaze.

“It was scary, I guess, but exhilarating at the same time, kind of balanced itself out,” Flewelling said. “I was 19 and it was kind of throw caution to the wind kind of thing, living fast, living hard. Nothing really scared us back then.”

Over the years, he noted it’s tough in stretches dividing his home life with wife Vanessa and the couple’s four children -- Zachary, 24, Lucas, 11, Anna, 8, and Chase, 6 -- and the needed work at the department.

“One of the most challenging things is finding the balance between the on-call fire service, job, family, all that,” commented Flewelling. “It demands a lot of time and I see lot of people struggle with it.”

His children also play a driving force behind him sticking with the department.

“To imagine what those kids would say if I had walked away. They wouldn’t probably let me forget about it for a long time,” laughed Flewelling, with doodles by his children on a white board reading “Chief” next to his desk.

When he receives a page for a call at home, Flewelling said his younger ones are “screaming at me.”

“Half the time they’ve got my boots at the door,” he noted, asking their father “Where you going, dad? Where you going? How long until you’re back?”

But Flewelling doesn’t have to look too far at scenes or around the fire station to find a piece of home with him as son Zachary, 24, has been on the department for six years.

That move didn’t come without a stern, but honest conversation between father and son.

“When he first approached me about it, I just made it clear to him there’s no breaks,” said Flewelling. “You are expected to stand on your own merit, and I’ll help in any way I can, but I’m not going to cover for you in any way or let you slide on certain things. I told him flat out you’ve got to earn it and he has, he’s done a really great job.”

In looking at the situation as a father, Flewelling has a sense “extreme pride” in what his son has accomplished.

“I’m very, very proud of him,” he said. “He’s a good worker, he’s a hard worker, good man, proud to have him as a son.”

Flewelling is looking for others to add to the firehouse family which has become a more difficult process over the years with instability in the local job and housing market.

“General Motors leaving really decimated a lot of us because you had three shifts and thousands of people working there,” he said. “When I got on in 1996, out of 20 to 25 people probably at least half if not three quarters worked for GM and so you had a lot of daytime guys, a lot of nighttime guys.”

With the drop in those figures to single digits at the department combined with an emphasis on high school graduates going to college rather than directly into the workforce and shift in the housing market to more renters making it easier to uproot, Flewelling said there is a shortage of daytime firefighters across the county.

He’s in the finishing stages of putting together a recruitment program targeting certain demographics including work shifts and experience level to try and “pinpoint more than just scatter shot” in trying to find new blood, with the department looking to add up to eight members should the right candidates come along.

For the new personnel, Flewelling said it’s important to be as prepared as possible for every situation. His lessons learned come from experience including some fires that have stuck with him over the years.

Flewelling found himself in the basement of a Rosemore Drive home a few years ago after going through the stairs at a home that firefighters were called out to two days earlier.

“I couldn’t go more than a couple feet,” he said. “It took a couple minutes, it took a bit of struggle to get a ladder in there to lay down the stairs. “Preparation, mayday-RIT training, a lot of things really struck me that day to how important (training) is.”

He sits down with firefighters after each call to evaluate not so much what they did wrong or could do better, Flewelling said, but the discussion revolves more around “what can we do different the next time we see this situation or a similar one because none of them are the same.”

All these years later, hours at scenes, training sessions and fires later, Flewelling knew he wanted the chief spot when it came open.

“I’ve always wanted to progress up that ladder and move up someday, be in the top,” he said. “It’s kind of a dream come true, you know? To be a full-time fireman, a full-time fire chief. This is my job…Some days it’s hard to believe still.”

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