Our Someone 2 Know moved to northern Nevada in 2012.
That year, Fire Chief Charles Moore was hired to head up the newly-independent Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District.
Now, with ten years at that position and more than 40 years in fire service - Moore says he's still driven to help others, and still gets an adrenaline rush from his work.
We caught up with the Chief at the headquarters for Truckee Meadows Fire & Rescue on Barron Way in Reno.
Moore says there is one wildfire that’s been the most impactful - the Little Valley Fire of 2016.
Driven by wind-gusts nearly 90 miles per hour, the massive blaze torched more than 2,000 acres and destroyed 23 homes in Washoe Valley. The escaped prescribed-burn shocked and devastated the Little Valley community and still haunts Chief Moore.
"Because how close we came to losing citizens and firefighters in that particular call. It was by a razor thin margin.”
As the head of Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue (TMFR), Moore says it's his job to makes sure his team is always prepared. "You do that through training and proper equipment and that's one thing I think we do well.”
The Chief gives credit to everyone at the fire agency.
"They're incredibly talented, incredibly dedicated and I owe the success of this organization to my staff.’
By most measures, TMFR is a very successful organization. "In ten years, we've doubled in size, we have one of the most modern fleets of any fire department in northern Nevada, we’ve doubled our staff.”
All this from a man who never dreamed of being a firefighter. He graduated college as an architect.
"I was so bored sitting at a drafting table.”
Living in Colorado at the time, Moore signed up to be a volunteer fire fighter. "It was really the adrenaline rush of the job that got me hooked and helping people - which was enormously satisfying.”
By the time he was 30 years old, Moore became fire chief of the Avon-Beaver Creek area, west of Vail. "I was probably the youngest fire chief in Colorado at the time.”
Here in northern Nevada, Chief Moore has been the public face of his agency, addressing the media at the scene of fires - and the voice appealing for funding and change, like implementing the ash can program - and more.
"We do that through our paramedic program, we do that through a lot of our prevention programs - the green waste program which has been hugely successful.”
So, with a fair amount of accomplishments to his name and 42 years of fire service, we asked Chief Moore - what's next?
"I haven't written that chapter yet,” Moore grins, “We'll have to wait and see what happens.”
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Truckee Meadows Fire & Rescue serves unincorporated areas of Washoe County, Nevada - not including the cities of Sparks or Reno - for a total of 6,000 square miles across the region.
This year they are celebrating 50 years of service.
Link to Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue here - https://tmfpd.us/
