By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
Brent Smith had been serving as the interim fire chief since early February. He was appointed as Great Bend’s fulltime fire chief last week. Although he performed the same duties for nearly five months, he woke up the morning after being officially appointed and asked his wife, “What do I do?”. Smith got dressed, went to the gym and went back to work doing what he loves to do. He did change it up by bringing doughnuts to both fire stations and City Hall that morning.
As
fire chief, Smith has stressed the importance of having good communication
amongst the crew.
"I'm trying some different things to make the guys feel included in what we do and what I do," said Smith. "Nothing we do is top secret. For years in the fire service, you've always treated it as such. It's not, so why treat it that way? Give them the information so they feel a part of where we're going."
To help with communication and transparency, Smith sends out an email every
Friday to everyone employed with the Great Bend Fire Department that outlines
everything the administration is doing within the department.
"That email is anywhere from two to four pages depending on what we have going on," said Smith. "I've done it every Friday since I started as interim chief and I plan on continuing that until I retire."
After spending 16 years as captain in Sedgwick County prior to coming to Great
Bend as the deputy chief in 2019, Smith didn’t envision becoming a fire chief so soon in his
career.
"When I came here, the former chief and myself were close to the same age," said Smith. "You have that understanding that we'll both probably retire at about the same time. I loved being the deputy chief with hands on with training. Things happen. I got the opportunity to do something that I was probably going to do later in my career."
Now that he is a fire chief, he wants his crew to have involvement in
the department and know that management trusts them.
"I believe in letting people make their mistakes," said Smith. "We'll discuss afterwards on maybe things we could have done differently. We'll use it as a learning moment instead of the person feeling like someone always has their thumb on them and are scared to do anything for getting in trouble."