The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s U.S. Fire Administration’s National Fire Academy (NFA) announced that Glassy Mountain Fire Department Fire Chief Robert J. Staples successfully completed the Executive Fire Officer Program (EFOP). 

“The intensive EFOP is designed to provide senior fire officers with a broad perspective on various facets of fire administration,” according to U.S. Fire Administrator Ernest Mitchell, Jr. “This program provides executive fire services officers with the expertise they need to succeed in today’s challenging environment.”

The EFOP is a four-year program. The required executive-level courses covered in sequence are:

• Executive Development: The entry-level course emphasizes team development and consensus decision making to enhance organizational effectiveness.

• Executive Analysis of Community Risk Reduction: Involves developing partnerships with the community to implement programs, initiatives and services that prevent and/or mitigate the risk of human-made or natural disasters.  Traditional fire prevention programs are addressed.

• Executive Analysis of Fire Service Operations in Emergency Management: The analysis of incident response in light of the National Response Framework, the National Incident Management System (NIMS), Integrated Emergency Management System, emergency operations center functions, planning and documentation are some of the topics covered.

• Executive Leadership: Examines all aspects of executive-level leadership and ties together the educational experiences of the three previous years.

“Each of the four courses require a written applied research project to demonstrate application of course theory and concepts to real life situations within the student’s own organization.  Each of these projects was evaluated through a formal process and progression through the program was contingent on achieving each of these milestones,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell continued, “It’s important that these senior fire executives apply what they have learned in the classroom to existing situations in their own communities.  This makes completion of the EFOP and the ARPs particularly valuable to these fire service leaders.”

The Glassy Mountain Fire Service Area was established in 1987 to organize a volunteer fire department to provide fire/safety protection and a first response emergency unit within the community. The Glassy Mountain Fire Service Area covers nearly 52 square miles with a population of approximately 3,000 residents in the area known as The Dark Corner in northern Greenville County which stretches from the east at the Spartanburg County line on Highway 14 to the west of Highway 25 and begins in the south near Highway 414 to the North Carolina state line. The district operates five fire stations–Glassy Mountain (Headquarters), Beaver Dam, Oak Grove, Dividing Water and Cliffs with approximately 50 career and volunteer firefighters and first responders.  For more information, visit gmfd.net.

– article submitted by Sharyn Arnold