For years, the City of Fairburn owned the fire station and equipment on East Broad Street but contracted with Fulton County for firefighting services. A recent vote by the City Council paved the way for the city to establish its own department and provide its own personnel. With that transition came the need for a chief. And Fairburn’s new chief is former Riverdale Deputy Fire Chief Jody Weller.

Though a youthful 34 years old, Weller brings 15 years experience with him and firefighting in his blood. Weller began his career at Riverdale Fire Department at age 19 and worked his way up through the ranks to become Deputy Chief.

“You work for your entire career to move up the ladder. I’ve been fortunate to have the doors of opportunity open for me where I’ve received education and I’ve been able to get experience, even at a young age, to progress to where I am now,” Weller said. “The long-term goal when you start is to become chief. Then you go through the interview process and the position is offered to you. Then it starts to sink in, the responsibilities and the task that’s at hand, even in an established department. My biggest thing to have here is not only a department that is looked at as a responding agency to fires or EMS (Emergency Medical Services) or HazMat (Hazardous Materials), but I want a department that is rich in prevention, through speaking in schools and other places so that, hopefully, as long as I’m chief, we don’t have a fire death. That’s my goal.”

Weller said his first responsibility is to set up the new department. Once the department is organized his next assignment is to determine a location for a second fire station for the rapidly growing city that has doubled in population in the past five years. And as for staffing, Weller said he is being inundated with requests from area firefighters to join the new department. Fairburn, he said, is in the process of building a foundation that will result in running its own fire department. His intention, said Weller, is for that foundation to be one of strength and based on good ideas.

“The groundwork for the new department is just excellent. There’s a blueprint here of the things to be done. I’m fortunate to be able to work with Walt Brown. He’s a wealth of knowledge. Walt was brought up in this town and has had a life-long dream to see this fire department come about and he’s getting to see that dream. I’m glad to be a part of it,” said Weller. “Fire departments are rich in tradition. And being able to form a new department in a town like Fairburn, with all the great things I’ve heard from the people that work here, from the citizens I’ve spoken with, being able to be a part of forming this fire department is very special to me.”

Weller said firefighters represent a profession that is widely respected for its direct participation in saving lives and property. That image was accentuated after the events of 9/11, he said. Over the decades the technology and educational opportunities have changed. Those changes have helped firefighters become increasingly proactively engaged in their communities.

“Firefighting is a profession. The old mindset was that firefighters sat there and played checkers or slept until something happened. But it’s not that way anymore. It’s a profession with highly trained individuals that are continuously getting more education. It’s an ever-evolving profession and there is always something new. We’re always trying to get more education. We’re always trying to make ourselves a little bit better so that we’re able to be prepared for the incident rather than just waiting on it to happen,” Weller said, reflecting on the way the public’s view of firefighters heightened after the events at the World Trade Center. “People look up to the fire department. And if people don’t know who to call they call the fire department. Whether it’s a water leak or when their child falls off their bike or whatever the case may be. People call the fire department. And the fire department is there to help. It’s a different profession than any I know of. I’ve grown up in it. It’s my life. I’ve seen it change but the tradition is still there from days ago. But there is still the newness of everything we have to deal with today.”

Perhaps unrecognized by some in the public, firefighters, by the nature of their work, deal with situations and events that can be unsettling, even traumatic. They live with repeated exposure to the human tragedy that results from traffic accidents, fires and other calls. It all comes with the territory of the work, Weller said.

“Roughly 80-85 percent of the calls that are answered by fire departments across America are EMS calls. So we carry medications and oxygen and everything but the stretcher. On a lot of those calls firefighters get there as much as 10 minutes before the ambulance,” Weller said. “Many people look at their job as a job. For firefighters, it’s their life. They have a family at home, but the the firefighters are their other family. When you come to work you are ready for the worst possible thing that could happen. And every call they respond to could be the worst possible thing in their life they might have to witness. Some of the things they see are almost indescribable to many people. It wears on you, but firefighters find ways to deal with it.”

“Firefighters don’t take this job to be able to count the number of lives they’ve saved or the number of houses they’ve saved. They do this job because it’s what you’ve been put on this Earth to do. It’s difficult to describe. It’s in your blood.”

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