He fights fires, responds to people having heart attacks or other medical emergencies, and gives his fellow firefighters flu shots.

Meet Deputy Chief Stephen Fox of the South Portland Fire Department: firefighter, paramedic, registered nurse – and wave of the future.

“He represents the future of the fire service,” said South Portland Fire Chief Kevin Guimond, who recently promoted Fox to deputy chief and nominated him for a community award. “He mirrors my idea of where the department needs to go.”

Guimond said that his well-educated ¬deputy chief – in addition to degrees in criminology and nursing, Fox also is working on a master’s degree in public health ¬– has the kind of multi-faceted skills that firefighters increasingly need in the 21st century.

That’s because firefighters today must not only fight fires, but also must be prepared to respond to events that range from medical emergencies to the H1N1 flu pandemic to terrorist attacks like a dirty bomb.

“We don’t just go to fires anymore,” explained Fox, who also is the health officer for the city of South Portland.

Two events this week honor the 43-year-old Scarborough resident for his wide-ranging abilities.

In one event, on Wednesday, April 7, at 10 a.m. at South Portland City Hall, Fox, was to be formally promoted to the position of deputy chief. In the new grant-funded position, to which he was appointed March 27, Fox will be in charge of homeland security and emergency management South Portland as well as ensuring that hazardous materials in the city are handled safely.

Fox also will be recognized today, Thursday, April 8, at the Community Counseling Center’s 5th Annual Heroes with Heart event. The awards dinner at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland honors area police, firefighters, paramedics and hospital personnel for going above and beyond the call of duty.

Fox is among the honorees at the event. Chief Guimond nominated him for the award.

One of the reasons cited for Fox’s nomination is his compassion as a firefighter.

In the recent past, a home where the resident had numerous pets caught on fire. After putting out the blaze, Fox, his crew and some Trauma Intervention Program volunteers that Fox called in all helped ensure that the rescued pets were cared for and received treatment from a local vet, according to Fox’s nomination statement.

“He could have easily left the family to handle the situation, but was in the forefront in making sure that every family member – whether they were human or not! – got care and attention,” the statement says.

Susan Scanlon, interim crisis team manager for the Trauma Intervention Program – a nonprofit program in which trained citizen volunteers provide “emotional first aid” to people involved in traumatic events – said Fox is “one of the most caring people I have ever encountered.”

Scanlon said the program’s volunteers only go to events where they are summoned by first responders such as police and firefighters.

“Steve is certainly one that calls us a lot and makes good use of us,” she said. “He wants to make sure that the people he’s working with get all the help they can.”

Fox said he calls on the volunteers because the needs of people involved in a trauma like a fire don’t go away when the fire is out and the firefighters have gone back to the station. “(The) TIP (program) gets called a lot for people who have lost pets,” he said.

Another reason Fox was nominated for the Heroes with Heart award is his work as the city’s health officer to combat the H1N1 flu pandemic last year.

Fox took over the public health job in 2008, Guimond said.

“It’s one of those kinds of positions that nobody really pays attention to, then all of a sudden H1N1 happens,” Guimond said. “He had to step up to the plate, and did a really great job.”

Fox took the lead into making sure South Portland had clinics in the community and the schools to vaccinate residents against the potentially-deadly virus. He also developed the city’s H1N1 policy.

And Guimond said that Fox, a registered nurse, vaccinated fellow firefighters.

Fox, who grew up in Amherst, N.H., didn’t plan on being a nurse or a firefighter, although he did volunteer for his hometown’s fire and rescue department.

His first interest was in being a police officer.

“Public safety was always sort of a thing for me,” said Fox, whose father was a teacher and whose mother worked as a paralegal, and whose two brothers now work in finance.

Fox, who is married and has a 13-year-old daughter, ended up attending school in South Portland at what was then Southern Maine Vocational Technical Institute – today’s Southern Maine Community College. He got a degree in law enforcement in 1984, and then went to the University of Southern Maine, where he earned a degree in criminology in 1990, he said.

But by then he had become interested in firefighting, and was hired by the South Portland Fire Department in 1988.

As a firefighter he found himself responding not only to fires but to an increasing number of calls for emergency medical services.

That’s a phenomenon that’s been occurring nationwide since the 1980s, according to Guimond and Fox.

Such factors as the use of non-combustible construction materials and fire prevention programs in the schools have all contributed to a decrease in the number of building fires, Fox said.

At the same time, medical emergency calls are increasing.

Guimond said that the aging of the baby boomer generation and the fact that many people without insurance must rely on emergency rooms for medical care means that more people are calling ambulances.

“We do everything,” the chief said. “If you’re having a heart attack we come. If you fall down on the ice, we come.”

He said that approximately 70 to 75 percent of all the department’s calls now are medical calls for ambulances.

Other departments have seen similar increases in emergency medical calls. In Scarborough, according to Chief Michael Thurlow, 56 percent of the total calls for service are for emergency medical services.

In Cape Elizabeth, Chief Peter Gleeson said, there are two emergency medical calls for every one fire call.

So Fox became a paramedic, completing a state paramedic program in 1992. “I felt that as busy as we were with emergency medical services, I wanted to be able to perform the maximum number of skills,” he said.

Fox today is not alone in being a firefighter and a paramedic.

He said that an increasing number of firefighters elect to get that extra training. For example, he said, in South Portland’s 63-member fire department, 35 staff members are paramedics and two are in training to be.

And then Fox decided to take another step and become a nurse, like his wife. He graduated from Southern Maine Community College with a nursing degree in 2002, he said.

Fox is one of three nurses in the South Portland Fire Department, according to Guimond.

Scarborough also has a firefighter who is a nurse –Lt. Nate Contreras, who is a paramedic as well.

Contreras, who formerly worked for South Portland, said that seeing Fox get his nursing degree helped inspire him to do the same. Contreras said that the experience of being a nurse enables him to provide more assurance to patients when he goes on emergency calls, because he can better explain what will happen to them when the ambulance arrives at a hospital and they’re admitted.

Fox and Contreras are ahead of the curve, but Fox says that more firefighters are following in their footsteps and starting to get nursing degrees. “It’s a trend I see happening with a lot of paramedic firefighters nowadays,” he said.

His own educational trajectory has not stopped with a nursing degree. He has already started taking classes towards a master’s degree in public health from the University of New England.

When Fox retires from the fire department – he’ll be eligible to do so in 2013 – he said he’s planning on a career in public health. He hopes to go overseas to countries hit by disasters and do such things as help set up a medical clinic or a system for obtaining clean drinking water.

It’s not only a chance to see the world, Fox said, but “the way I was raised, I like to work with people … to help people.”

South Portland Fire Department Deputy Chief Stephen Fox discusses some of the rigors of the job at the station on Friday.
Staff photo by Brandon McKenney