Fairfield fire chief takes Oskaloosa job

FAIRFIELD – Fairfield Fire Chief Scott Vaughan is saying goodbye to the community he has called home for nearly his entire life.

Vaughan is moving to Oskaloosa, where he will become the Oskaloosa Fire Chief starting Monday, March 14. His last day as Fairfield’s fire chief is today, Friday, March 11. To honor his years of service to the city, Fairfield City Hall is holding a going away party for Vaughan from 2-4 p.m. Friday.

Vaughan said he is excited for a new challenge in a new city. Oskaloosa is larger than Fairfield, and its fire department is larger, too, with 29 firefighters compared to Fairfield’s 21. That was one of the things that attracted Vaughan to the job. Plus, he said he’s gotten to know people from Oskaloosa in recent years through his son playing on a traveling baseball team from that town.

“My son got to know quite a few of the kids that he’ll be going to high school with, and we got to know a lot of the parents on the team from the Oskaloosa area,” Vaughan said. “I’ve got another 7-10 years left of working, and I wanted to give myself that challenge of working in a bigger town.”

Goodbyes are never easy, and Vaughan said he’s going to miss the friends he’s made in the Fairfield Fire Department, which he called a “second family.”

“This is a great group of guys who totally care about what they do, and they take it very seriously,” Vaughan said. “I’m going to be really excited to see that new fire station for these guys to do their work in, a modern facility that allows them more space to do their work, and in a healthy manner.”

Upon Vaughan’s departure, Fairfield Assistant Fire Chief Lyle Hannes will take the reins as interim fire chief. Vaughan has other duties with the city that include being its code enforcement officer, performing rental inspections and helping with planning and zoning. Hannes will not assume these other duties, and the position of fire chief will revert to being a part-time job as it was years ago. The city plans to hire a full-time code compliance officer.

Early life

Vaughan was born in a suburb of Chicago called Elmhurst, but in 1973 when he was 8 years old, Vaughan and his parents moved to Fairfield. He remembers that back then city hall was in the building now occupied by Istanbul Grill, and a siren on top of the building would sound whenever there was a fire.

“It would wail all throughout town,” Vaughan said. “Wherever you lived in town, you could pretty much ride a bike everywhere, and I remember chasing fire trucks. That thing would go off, and you knew something was happening. That’s where I got my first taste of [firefighting].”

In 1989, Vaughan’s parents moved to Columbus, Ohio, but he stayed in Fairfield where he and a friend rented a house. At the time, Vaughan was working in the meat department at Hy-Vee, and one day he got a call at work that his house was on fire. The gas line to the water heater had broken, sparking a fire that burned all the way through the floor.

“It was in February, and it was absolutely frigid outside. There was ice everywhere, and [the firefighters] had ice all over them,” Vaughan said. “That made me want to help out like they did. They left their jobs, and they were basically volunteers who got paid a minimal amount to come take care of the fire.”

Becoming a firefighter

At the time, Vaughan’s career ambitions were to become a meat manager with Hy-Vee, and he got the chance to do that in the town of Eldora, west of Waterloo. While there, he learned that Eldora was looking for volunteers for its fire department, and Vaughan decided to join. After living in Eldora a couple of years, Vaughan moved back to Fairfield to be Hy-Vee’s assistant meat manager and later the head meat manager.

Upon moving back to Fairfield in 1995, Vaughan joined the Fairfield Fire Department. He became the department’s fire chief in 2011.

Vaughan has been called to innumerable fires over the years. The ones that stand out in his mind were those on the Fairfield square because they required so much coordination with other emergency responders. Among those include the fire at Buckboard Annies on the south side of the square, and a fire on the east side of the square that required mutual aid from Mt. Pleasant’s fire department.

“You have to utilize your mutual aid on those, because you’ve got to rotate guys in and out,” Vaughan said, “whether it’s because of the weather or fatigue.”

Thinking back to those firefighters who suffered in the cold putting out the fire at his house, Vaughan said the coldest he’s ever been at a fire was the one at Peak Performance. The Eighth Judicial District building across the street opened its doors so the firefighters could go inside and warm up.

Saving lives

At one fire at an apartment building, Vaughan helped save two people who were trapped inside and had to be taken out through a window.

“Somebody had lit a fire in the stairway going up to the upper apartment, and when we got there we knew somebody was trapped up there,” he said. “Another firefighter and I got a ladder up to the house, and he helped the lady down and I helped the guy down. They were trapped, and the only way they were coming down was that ladder or jumping. That’s what our training is all about.”

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com