LR hires new fire chief
22-year Memphis department veteran to succeed Summers.
A veteran of the Memphis Fire Department will take over the helm of the Little Rock Fire Department upon Chief Gregory Summers’ exit.
Delphone Hubbard will start his new job as Little Rock fire chief late next month or in early January. He’s leaving a 22-year career in Memphis, where he has served as a division chief since last year, to take the $130,000 position in Little Rock.
City Manager Bruce Moore announced his selection Wednesday.
Hubbard, 50, beat out six semifinalists for the spot. Moore said he was looking for someone dedicated to fire safety and community involvement.
“During this search process I have had in-depth conversations with Chief Hubbard about fire service. I look forward to continuing these conversations as he serves the citizens of Little Rock. I know Little Rock will join me in welcoming Chief Hubbard, his wife and daughter,” Moore said in a news release.
Hubbard is replacing Summers, who is retiring after eight years as chief. Summers was the first black Little Rock fire chief. Hubbard will become the second black chief and the 13th overall since the department’s creation in 1881.
In his current role in Memphis, Hubbard supervises seven employees and creates the budget within his division.
He will now lead a department of 423 people with an operating budget of about $50 million.
He steadily moved up the ladder in Memphis, starting out as a private and an emergency medical technician, and being promoted to lieutenant and battalion chief over training before becoming a division chief.
Before joining the Memphis Fire Department in 1995, he worked as a deputy jailer for six years.
“I would like to thank Bruce Moore and the entire Little Rock community for entrusting me to lead the fine men and women of Little Rock Fire. It is a humbling experience, and I’m committed to serving this community every day with excellence and compassion,” Hubbard said when reached Wednesday. “My desire is to ensure imMany
mediate community fire protection, while also the safety of each fire personnel is my utmost concern.”
Hubbard attended undergraduate school at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, graduating in 2000, and obtained his master’s degree from Webster University in 2014. Both degrees are in business administration.
He said he sought the Little Rock job because it provided more opportunity to grow.
Richard Morehead, president of the local firefighters union, said he hopes Hubbard’s experience in a larger city will be put to good use in Little Rock.
“We are looking forward to working with him,” Morehead said.
Hubbard’s experience dealing with the fire union in Memphis should serve him well in dealing with Little Rock’s union, Morehead said.
The new chief, he said, also seems to understand the importance of having a standard four firefighters to a unit, something the department is sometimes not able to do when people go on sick leave or vacation.
Hubbard arrived prepared for his interview with a fourpart plan involving a community risk assessment, creating a professional development and succession plan for top officers, analyzing capital assets and assessing the workforce.
“Little Rock is a great city
from all I’ve read. Little Rock has a Class 1 rating on their ISO [insurance classification.] They are an accredited department. It’s a growing city — just a growing community, growing department. It’s a proven department, a Class A act. I would enjoy being a part of leading that. Not only leading that department, but sustaining what it already has accomplished and adding more to
it,” Hubbard told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette when he was still interviewing for the job.
Hubbard is a lifelong Memphian, but he said he couldn’t pass up the opportunity in Little Rock.
Before being offered the job, Hubbard said his team-building skills and inclusiveness made him right for the position.
“I have a leadership style that is inclusive of all. I want to hear your opinion before I have to make the ultimate decision. … I believe through a joint effort of the community, Fire Department as well as the rest of the city of Little Rock government, we can make Little Rock even greater than it currently is now,” Hubbard said at the time.
The Little Rock department is nationally accredited through the Commission of Fire Accreditation International. It’s one of 55 out of more than 29,000 fire departments in the nation to achieve both national accreditation and a Class 1 rating from the International Organization for Standardization.