The Eureka Fire Protection District will have a new chief by the end of this year.
Board of Directors members voted unanimously June 27 to name Assistant Chief Scott Barthelmass the successor to Chief Greg Brown, who will retire later this year, said Pat Feder, Board of Directors chairman.
“I am excited about this opportunity,” Barthelmass, 53, of Kirkwood said. “I have had great mentors who have given me the opportunities for training and development. I think Eureka Fire has a historic legacy of providing for the safety and betterment of the community. We want to do prevention and be actively involved. We have done that for years under Chief Brown. I want to continue that legacy.”
Brown, 59, of Eureka has served as chief since 1995. He has been with the district for 43 years, beginning as a junior firefighter at 16 years old.
“I am going to be doing something else, but I don’t know what yet,” he said. “Our normal retirement age in our system is 55, so I stayed a few years after that. Now, it is just time to move forward.”
Brown is being paid an annual salary of $134,182 as chief. Barthelmass, who has been the assistant chief since 2022, is being paid $123,102 and will be paid $134,182 when he takes over as chief.
Brown will continue as chief until at least Dec. 31. However, he said he may retire before the end of the year if the right opportunity becomes available.
“(Barthelmass) has been with the department for 27 years, and he has worked with Chief Brown as the assistant chief for the last two years,” Feder said. “Chief has been a great mentor for him, and Scott has been a great protege. The decision was pretty easy to make.”
Barthelmass
Barthelmass has been with Eureka Fire since 1997 when he started as a volunteer.
He became Eureka Fire’s public information officer in 1998, and in 2016, he moved into a community risk reduction role taking over the district’s outreach programs.
Barthelmass became the community risk reduction supervisor in 2017, and he was promoted to division chief in 2022.
“I think he will do a fine job,” Brown said. “He has been the assistant chief for two years and has been with the department for more than 20 years. He has some things he wants to try and move forward with.
“There are a number of projects the whole organization has been working on with strategic planning, standards and community risk reduction. That process will continue. He will lead that effort moving forward.”
Barthelmass said one of his top priorities as chief will be recruiting and retaining firefighters.
Eureka Fire has 52 full-time employees, which includes 44 firefighters, who are also trained paramedics, four chief officers and four administrative staff members.
“The market for firefighters has become very competitive,” Barthelmass said. “We want to be a destination department. We want to be a department where someone comes and stays their entire career. We want to recruit them, retain them and retire them. There are benefits to that. Having well-seasoned people to man your fire stations and respond to calls is to the betterment of your community.”
Barthelmass said another priority will be helping the next generation of leaders get ready to assume more responsibility at Eureka Fire.
“I am excited to bring up other leaders,” he said. “Someday I will leave. I want people who are better than me to lead the district. I want to prepare those people.”
Barthelmass said Eureka Fire is currently finalizing its strategic plan. He said the district has been working on the plan for about a year.
Barthelmass said he expects Eureka Fire to achieve many of the goals in the strategic plan by the end of this year and early next year. He also said the district has a committee that reviews the plan every two weeks.
“We are constantly re-evaluating it,” he said. “With the support of our board, we have done some great things. We continue to add personnel to make sure we are well manned. We have added equipment to keep up with those needs. We need to project where we need to go beyond that.”
Brown
Brown became a full-time firefighter in 1985 with Eureka Fire. He went to work for the Fenton Fire Protection District near the end of 1986, but he remained a volunteer for Eureka Fire.
Brown said he returned to Eureka Fire in 1987, and he also was promoted to lieutenant that year. In 1988, he became a captain, and he was named the deputy chief fire marshal in 1991.
Brown was named the assistant chief in 1995.
“(Brown) has done many things for the fire district, the community and for public safety across the region and state,” Barthelmass said. “He has addressed the cancer issue that affects firefighters, and the mental health issues that affect first responders. He has been instrumental locally and at a state level in getting funding and programs in place that not only protect our personnel but personnel across the state. I think it will be a loss.”
The district has transformed since Brown started as a junior firefighter in 1981.
House 1, 4849 Hwy. 109, was completed in 1988 and replaced the original house located on South Central Avenue. It is home to the administration office.
House 2, 1815 W. Fifth St., was completed in 1987. It’s located near the Six Flags St. Louis amusement park.
House 3, 3570 Riverbend Rd., in Hoene Springs was completed in 1998.
Deputy Chief William Stamberger said Houses 1 and 2 have full four-person crews and House 3 has a three-person crew that operates whichever equipment is required in an emergency, whether it’s a firetruck or an ambulance.
“When I first started as a junior firefighter we had the station in Old Town,” Brown said. “Now, we have three stations and a training center. We have grown from having 11 employees to 52 full-time people. We have added new equipment. We do a tremendous amount of training. We lowered our insurance rate. I think those are some really important things that we have done to help the community.”
Eureka Fire covers 82 square miles in St. Louis and Jefferson counties. Brown said the district can be challenging for firefighters.
“We have large-scale manufacturing, an amusement park, a prison, a ski slope, 37 miles of river, 26 miles of interstate, two railroads and a large percentage of the district that is wildland-type area,” he said. “We have to deal with everything from the potential of large structure fires to residential fire to brush fires to EMS calls to hazardous material calls to technical rescue calls. You name it, you can get a little bit of everything here in Eureka. In my career, I have seen a little bit of everything.”
Brown said along with growing the district, he is proud that Eureka Fire has become an integral part of the community and the number of outreach and education programs the district offers.
“We have made it a focus to become more involved in the community,” he said. “We have tremendously increased our community education and inspection programs to provide the highest level of public service that we can. We have come a long way.”
Feder said Brown will be missed.
“It will be a void to fill, but it will not be insurmountable because Chief has done a great job of mentoring Scott,” he said. “Chief Brown has done a great job of making sure our fire district and the men and women of the fire department are community centered. That was evident in our response to the 2015 and 2017 floods. When those two events hit, you really saw an organized and coordinated response. He was a sound voice of leadership, along with others in the community, to respond to the floods and the challenges.”
Transition
Barthelmass said Brown has helped him progress throughout his career, and the two will work together to make the transition smooth.
“We have to take the institutional knowledge that he has and transfer that to me,” Barthelmass said. “There are a lot of things that he does on the business side of the department. I have done the operation side. Capturing those processes and things are important, so we continue to do right by the community by being fiscally sound and continue to move forward.”
Barthelmass said the board is discussing how to fill the assistant chief position. However, he said there is no timeline to name the next assistant chief, and if the district promotes from within, it will need to fill positions as current employees are promoted.
“It is going to be a very busy period for us,” he said. “We have some amazing people. I think once the changes are made and people get comfortable in their new spots, you will see some awesome things coming out of the fire district.”