Cumberland’s newly-hired rescue director boasts extensive resumé
CUMBERLAND — If you happen to lose a veteran emergency medical services director to another community, it helps to fill that post with another welltrained and experienced director.
And that is what the town of Cumberland did this week with the hiring of John Pliakas as director of rescue services. He replaces former director Sean Thompson.
Thompson had 26 years in emergency medical services and seven years as Cumberland Rescue Director when he recently took a similar position with his hometown of Lincoln. And while Lincoln Town Administrator T. Joseph Almond, described Thompson as a “positive addition” to the “exceptional” services his town’s rescue personnel provide residents, Mayor Murray could offer his own praise of Pliakas, a past Cumberland rescue director and resident of North Cumberland. “I think we got a tremendous director,” Murray said while pointing to the 7-0 council vote on Pliakas’ appointment as another indication of his qualifications for the job.
“He has a great resumé and it is a list of a lot of things that he has done in rescue services,” Murray said.
Pliakas, in fact, served as the local rescue director back in the 1990s and already knows the Cumberland position’s requirements very well after being hired as a full-time paramedic for the town in 1985.
Kathleen J. Taraian, Cumberland Human Resource Director, said Pliakas left his post as director to become a Flight Paramedic in Boston, a position he held for 14 years. He has also earned credentials as a Critical Care Nurse Practitioner and has an affilia- tion with Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Mass.
Pliakas holds a number of specialty and instructor certifications in EMS and is a national-certified tactical paramedic. He serves as a tactical paramedic with a police tactical team in R.I., and is the former director of the program of Paramedicine at the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island in Pawtucket, Taraian said. Pliakas also holds citations from the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Rhode Island Department of Health, the Rhode Island Hospital Association, and the United States Secret Service. He holds appointments at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
Pliakas will be responsible for all of the town’s EMS operation as director of Rescue Services, Taraian said. Murray said Pliakas took over as director of rescue services on Monday.