Annapolis Valley Register

Filling big boots

Andrew Cranton takes over as new chief at Annapolis Royal fire hall

- BY LAWRENCE POWELL THE SPECTATOR ANNAPOLIS ROYAL

Andrew Cranton has been Annapolis Royal fire chief for just 10 days, but already he knows his biggest responsibi­lity is making sure his firefighte­rs get home safe after every call.

It’s a daunting task and a big responsibi­lity.

Chief Cranton looks back at his predecesso­rs like Malcolm Francis and Rick Smith with a newfound admiration. Those are big boots to fill. Cranton is now the guy people look to for direction, and making mistakes isn’t an option.

“It would totally devastate me if anything happened,” he said. “I take this job dead seriously.”

It’s a family of first responders who rely on each other through thick and thin.

“When I took that first leap to the white hat I grew up basically overnight. I had to,” said Cranton of his move to third deputy almost five years ago. “When you’re looking down and the rest of the crew is looking up at you for direction – things became really real.”

The new chief takes over from Francis who steered the department through some tough years of calls ranging from first response to fatal accidents, a summer of unpreceden­ted forest fires, and the second devastatin­g fire at legendary Milford House.

Cranton was there for it all and in his decades with the volunteer department has discovered three main truths about firefighti­ng – Wednesday night training, the need for the proper equipment, and the need for community support.

“In the almost 25 years I’ve been here we train every Wednesday night,” he said, adding while it may seem repetitive, you learn something new every time.

“Through our training here every Wednesday night, and our guys come out faithfully, we are prepared to the best of our abilities,” he said. “We’re going in armed with everything we can. This new tool that we purchased (Jaws of Life), this is just another piece in the arsenal for us that we can save lives faster.”

While he’s being interviewe­d, firefighte­r Matt Smith and Cranton’s son, firefighte­r Alex Cranton, are getting ready for the Wednesday night Chase the Ace. The fire hall is packed with people buying tickets and waiting for the draw. The Ace is worth $85,000 and hundreds of people are tuning in on Facebook Live to see if their ticket is drawn. While the hefty payout is incentive for public support, Cranton said the public is really invested in their firefighte­rs.

“The community is so driven with this fire hall,” he said. “They know where their money is going. Their money is going to help the community via the fire department. Everything that we raise is being used to purchase equipment to better ourselves.”

Applicatio­n

Andrew Cranton started out with the ARVFD in 1994. “I worked at CFB Cornwal- lis and I met a gentleman by the name of Raymond Wiles,” Cranton recalled. “He told me one day …‘you’d make a good fireman. You really need to join.’ He said ‘I’m going to get you an applicatio­n.’ I was really hesitant about filling out the applicatio­n because I was young and ‘was this the thing for me?’ I’d never been around anything like this before. The trucks, of course, always intrigued me as a little boy, but to be actually part and parcel here? I didn’t think I’d ever do it.”

But he signed the applicatio­n and Wiles endorsed it and wrote his name at the bottom.

“I came to the meeting and got voted in unanimousl­y and it took off from there,” he said. He took his Level 1 and has been learning ever since.

“I learned every aspect of what there was to learn about this hall from being a fireman to learning how to drive the trucks,” he said.

Then he learned pumpers, and found himself driving to a serious blaze.

“…it was the Milford House that was on fire for the first time,” he said. “I showed up to the hall and all I heard was ‘Cran, you’re driving.’ I jumped behind the wheel. The adrenaline was pumping. This was my first big fire. I stayed with it all night long until about nine o’clock the next morning before I went home and went to bed.”

Later he moved to the Zodiac with the department’s water rescue unit, and on to everything else to be learned.

Versatile

“I wanted to make myself com- pletely versatile on every piece of this hall,” he said. “When I joined up I never thought I’d make it as far as I did, do what I wanted to do, but I ended up taking a lieutenant’s position for a little while.”

That wasn’t really for him and he suspects he wasn’t ready for it.

“I still wanted to be a fireman. I still wanted to drive the trucks. I still wanted to be in the mix of it all,” he said.

He stepped back a bit and took a captain’s position, and after a number of years was a third deputy chief and stayed with that for almost five years.

“I attended more meetings, and I attended more things with the chief, and I started helping the chief out with his business, making sure that whatever he asked of me – paper work, phoning somebody, going and looking at something – it was something that I did,” he said.

Is he ready to be chief? Cranton hopes he is. If there’s another job in volunteeri­sm with more responsibi­lity, it would be difficult to find.

He’s attended numerous fires, accidents, and medical response scenes too many to remember. He’s learned that fact is stranger than fiction, and don’t take anything for granted – like Milford House on fire again.

“I was back for the second round. I was actually the first truck out again,” he said. “All I can really remember is ‘this can’t happen again.’ But it did. That 19 kilometres felt like nineteen hundred that night. It was just unbelievab­le. You never thought you’d go back again.”

 ??  ?? This map shows the area the Annapolis Royal Volunteer Fire Department is responsibl­e for. There are 38 firefighte­rs who go to calls from the west side of Youngs Mountain Road to east side of Moose River Road, just past Birch Lake on Highway 8.
This map shows the area the Annapolis Royal Volunteer Fire Department is responsibl­e for. There are 38 firefighte­rs who go to calls from the west side of Youngs Mountain Road to east side of Moose River Road, just past Birch Lake on Highway 8.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada