By William Reilly
Lynn Fire Chief Stephen Archer recently joined the Rotary Club of Lynn for a Zoom presentation to the Club. He shared with the Club some facts about the Fire Department as well as some personal information. Chief Archer was appointed in January 2018; he joined the force in 1993 when he was 29 years old. A true Lynner all his life, he graduated from Lynn Vocational Technical Institute and is a graduate of Anna Maria College. He resides in Lynn with his wife and four children.
Archer told the Rotary Club that the department consists of 182 uniformed members, with an overall staff of about 200. The budget for FY 2021 is in the neighborhood of $20 million. Falling under the department is the civilian-staffed dispatch center, which also dispatches for the Nahant and Swampscott Fire Departments.
The department is rated as a Class 3 department by the Insurance Services Offices which rates fire departments: Class 1 is the best, with 10 the worst.
One of Chief Archer’s goals is to establish a Public Services building, (Fire and Police) near the waterfront in order to have services closer to the new apartments being constructed in that area. That plan would help improve Lynn’s Class rating. The Class rating is one of the many items factored into fire insurance premiums – the better the Class rating, the lower the premiums for homeowners. Archer would like to see a Public Services building because of the number of new apartments either under construction or in the late planning stages in that area. Those apartments could have more than 1,500 new Lynn residents.
Another of Chief Archer’s goals is to attract more Lynners to the department in order to have the department better reflect the population of the City. Archer told the Rotary Club that a high percentage of the city’s population is Hispanic, and it would be better for the city to have more Hispanic residents in the department. He felt that in order to attract more applicants to the department, recruiting needs to be done in the middle school grades. It is his intent to start to do that, perhaps having a “Career Day” presentation at the Boys & Girls Club where he is a Board member. This may get the students, and their parents to start thinking about a career in the department. Sometimes recruiting at the high school level is done after the students have decided on another path.
Archer also shared with the Rotary Club that the department is moving into the 21st century in that the department has been utilizing new technology, such as aerial drones, in fighting fires. Their use helps in determining whether or not a fire is being knocked down adequately, and they also help in identifying “hot-spots” without risking firefighters’ safety, among many other uses.
The members of the Rotary Club of Lynn enjoyed the Chief’s presentation.
William Reilly is the president of the Rotary Club of Lynn.