NY Fire Departments Share Chief on Trial Basis

Sep. 25—GREEN ISLAND — Cohoes Fire Chief Joseph Fahd stood on the banks of Hudson River on Sept. 14 watching the village fire department pull its boat out of the river after a man fleeing police had been pulled ashore.

Fahd wasn't there leading Cohoes' 32 firefighters. Fahd was in his new role of also leading the seven-member Green Island Fire Department as its acting chief.

Without a fire chief, Green Island has turned to its northern neighbor to help out with the administration of its fire department. That's what brought Fahd down to the scene.

"This seemed like a quick fix. We're doing it on a trial basis. It seems to be working out," Green Island Mayor Ellen McNulty-Ryan said.

The experiment in joint leadership is about one-third of the way through the three months Green Island and Cohoes have agreed upon. Fahd isn't getting paid by Green Island. City officials said it's all volunteer.

"Chief Fahd helping out, essentially volunteering his time to Green Island, is not really that unusual. Firefighting is a brotherhood," Cohoes Mayor Bill Keeler said.

With just seven firefighters, Green Island doesn't have the staff with all the training required to serve as a chief, McNulty-Ryan said. The village has mutual aid agreements with its neighboring municipalities of Cohoes and Watervliet.

The three departments respond to each other fires. Watervliet and Green Island have shared equipment and Watervliet provides ambulance coverage. Watervliet has 25 firefighters.

"We see it as natural to work with Cohoes on the firefighting end of it and we work with Watervliet on the EMT end," McNulty-Ryan said.

Cohoes and Green Island firefighters train together all the time making it ideal to turn to Fahd to step in as Green Island's acting fire chief, McNulty-Ryan said.

"It's totally natural for the fire chief to be participating," Keeler said.

It's a three-month arrangement to share Fahd for now. Keeler said he believes Green Island will eventually have its own chief. McNulty-Ryan wants to see how things develop.

The last time Cohoes was involved in the consideration of sharing any portion of firefighting services was in 2010 and 2011. That's when the cities of Cohoes and Watervliet carried out a joint $45,000 study on merging their fire departments.

That proposal drew opposition from the public and the firefighters in both cities. Keeler said Cohoes is not looking for a merger. He pointed to the mutual aid pacts as providing a sharing of services that each community need for responding to fire calls.

Keeler and McNulty-Ryan view Fahd's dual role as both city and village fire chief as a shared service. Fahd won't be fighting fires, he'll be leading operations and taking care of day-to-day administrative tasks for the departments while they otherwise remain independent.

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