NC Department Reorganizes After Split

The Kinston Fire Department’s has plans to ramp up community involvement and public education programs and has named its staff.

The new fire administrative captain, William Barrs, has experience with police and fire. He began his career with the city in 1998 as a firefighter. He then joined the special response unit of 14 police and firefighters who were cross-trained to be able to perform each discipline.

“I served on the special response unit for six years and when a position in the crime lab opened up I was able to get promoted over to a crime lab detective, which I did for five years,” Barss said.

Barss decided he wanted to come back to the fire side when the department split was announced early this year.

“I’ve always been fire-oriented,” Barss said. “Pretty much since I was 2 years old, I’ve wanted to be a firefighter.

He is now in charge of fire administration, including public education, ISO (known as fire supression) ratings, citywide emergency planning, department safety and many more tasks.

Administrative Cmdr. Earnest Davis has been with the Kinston fire department since 1989. He will be supervising the other captains and conducting research for the ISO and OSHA standards, but a large part of his daily job will be company-level fire inspections.

“Before Commander Davis was promoted, for the last 10 years he has been managing that program,” Chief Don Crawford said.

Davis said in the past, he would conduct his regular duties and take work home with him.

“A lot of the time I was sitting on the computer at one or two in the morning trying to support the administrative part because there wasn’t anybody to do it,” he said.

Training Safety Capt. Michael Scrufari has worked for the Kinston Fire Department for the last 22 years and has been in his position with the Kinston Fire Department for the last year and a half, working with Crawford.

“Doing the split, we needed command staff presence, not only in training but in other areas for larger emergencies, like a hurricane,” Scrufari said.

Scrufari is in charge of setting up the departments’ technical training, evaluating drivers, assisting in the hiring process anf purchasing fire equipment.

“It’s been a real big learning experience over the past year and a half,” he said.

Program Support Assistant Stephanie Harper worked for the public safety program as a report technician on the police side before transferring to the fire side.

Many of her responsibilities include corresponding with the public, organizing personnel files, payroll, helping with the budget and her responsibilities grow daily.

“I love my new job; it is a new world,” Harper said. “When you have an opportunity to see the other world, you respect it a little bit better.”

All administrative staff members, with the exception of Harper, are still registered fire fighters and continue to answer fire calls and rescue service calls.

Michelle Piper may be reached at 252-559-1073 and Michelle.Piper@Kinston.com. You can follow her on Twitter at @MPiperKFP.

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©2016 The Free Press (Kinston, N.C.)

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