It was day one Tuesday for the newest Fire Chief in Williams Lake.
“Anxious and excited. It’s a great honor to represent the Williams Lake Fire Department and the City of Williams Lake,” said Erick Peterson.
“It’s a monumental task for me. It comes with great responsibility.”
Before his arrival to Williams Lake with his spouse and two children on Saturday, June 30 Peterson said he was keeping in close contact with Deputy Fire Chief Randy Isfeld.
“He’s been working with me for the last little while. We’ve been communicating by phone and email, and I was, fortunately, able to come up a few days ago and we’ve been working together to help to make as smooth a transition as possible.”
For the past 15 years, Peterson served on the Delta Fire Department. He was deployed to Williams Lake by Emergency Management BC to assist the Cariboo Regional District’s Emergency Operations Centre during last summer’s wildfire season.
“Nobody wants to go through what we went through last year, but the relationships that I’ve built and developed during the time I spent up here it was nice to come up here and become their fire Chief and work with those people and see their faces again because we were so close,” he says.
“Even before I came I was receiving messages on Facebook. It’s been nothing but supportive and everyone’s been absolutely amazing. Everyone’s happy to meet me in the community and it speaks well for the region.”