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Glendale fire chief’s legacy of innovation, compassion lives on after his death

Posted 5/17/20

Former Glendale fire Chief Glenn Gray Crabtree died this month, six days shy of his 82nd birthday. Though Chief Crabtree retired 31 years ago, his impact on the Glendale Fire Department, on the city …

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Glendale fire chief’s legacy of innovation, compassion lives on after his death

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Former Glendale fire Chief Glenn Gray Crabtree died this month, six days shy of his 82nd birthday. Though Chief Crabtree retired 31 years ago, his impact on the Glendale Fire Department, on the city and on the Valley live on even after his death.

“(He left) really, really great legacy. You never wanted to let him down. So, even after he was gone, that was in the back of your mind. You always want to make sure you didn’t let Chief Crabtree down,” said former Glendale Fire Chief and current Buckeye Valley Fire District Chief Mark Burdick.

Mr. Crabtree, who went by his middle name Gray, started at the Glendale Fire Department in 1961, became chief in 1973 and retired in 1989. He was the department’s second paid chief. Retired Glendale Fire Captain Jay Shaver, who joined the department in 1978, said Mr. Crabtree did a lot to modernize the department in his 16 years as chief.

“He had good vision. He took us from a small town, semiprofessional type of fire department to a big city, very well equipped, very well trained fire department,” Mr. Shaver said.

Mr. Crabtree was on the forefront of introducing paramedics to fire departments and helped create Arizona’s first state paramedic program. He helped erase city boundaries through a groundbreaking automatic aid system that dispatched the closest available unit to an emergency, regardless of the city.

“Everybody gives him credit that he made us — we always call it a paramedics department — when other departments were just trying to make inroads on that,” said current Glendale Fire Battalion Chief Alex Morales, who joined the department in 1987.

Mr. Crabtree’s legacy lives on in more than just his innovations. His balance of high standards and a fun-loving nature lead those who worked with him to speak about him only with the utmost respect, and the care he showed for both the firefighters who worked for him and the residents he served carries on three decades after he left the department.

“I think that’s probably the greatest value he instilled in us is the commitment to make sure we’re doing the best thing for the citizen we can. And to hold our standards high,” said Mr. Burdick, who joined the Glendale Fire Department in 1983.

Automatic aid

Mr. Crabtree had a playful, competitive friendship with then Phoenix Fire Chief Alan Brunacini, but the two realized there was no need to be competitive in serving the residents of the Valley. Through the mutual aid system used then, for a fire unit to cross a city border to service an emergency in the next city, that city’s department had to call to request them. Even in those cases, they often weren’t using the same radio frequencies and couldn’t communicate well.

Mr. Burdick said the two chiefs sat down for lunch to discuss how their departments could work in better harmony, and Mr. Brunacini jotted down notes on a napkin for what would come one of the most innovative emergency response systems on the globe.

The system they came up with, automatic aid, eliminated boundaries in jurisdiction. The nearest unit responded to the emergency through a centralized dispatch center in Phoenix. Because local dispatch centers had recently just switched from manual dispatch to computer-aided dispatch and through the use of GPS, which has become widely available just years earlier, even a truck just driving by an emergency could be identified as the best unit to respond.

This system, still used today, saves critical time in emergency response. Mr. Morales said he’s personally responded to many emergencies, namely drownings and fires, where that time saved was critical. Mr. Morales noted that fires can double every minute.

“The quicker you can get someone there and start putting water on it, the least damage it can do and the more chance there is of rescuing someone from inside,” he said.

Tempe shortly joined Glendale and Phoenix in the early system. Today, 25 cities and fire districts participate in automatic aid.

“It was absolutely revolutionary, been done nowhere else in the whole world, definitely not in the country,” Mr. Morales said

Mr. Shaver said that the Valley’s system led the way for a lot of other places in the country to implement something similar, but Mr. Morales noted some areas still can’t get it done because of conflicts between jurisdictions and governments and use a mutual aid service instead.

Mr. Burdick said fire officials from Europe and Australia have visited the Valley to study at its automatic aid system.

In addition to reducing response times, automatic aid also saved taxpayer money. Before it started, both Glendale and Phoenix had dispatch centers, but once dispatch was centralized, the Glendale center closed.

Because cities’ share jurisdictions, it also means fewer stations are needed.

“Now you didn’t have to put a station at the border. You could hopscotch. Phoenix does one, we do another, and then we have that area covered. We could basically do it with half the amount of stations,” Mr. Morales said.

Paramedics

Mr. Crabtree helped introduce paramedics to Glendale and to Arizona at a time when the job was scarcely practiced in the U.S. His inspiration? He saw it on TV, or at least, the residents he served did.

“Emergency!” was a show that ran on NBC from 1972 to 1977, following two Los Angeles County paramedics named Gage and DeSoto as they responded to emergencies in a pickup truck with a box of medical supplies called Rescue 51. The show was inspired by real paramedics units at the LA County Fire Department.

Mr. Burdick said Mr. Crabtree told him residents started bringing up the show.

“He said a number of residents came in and said, ‘Hey, I’ve been watching the show “Emergency!” Do we have paramedics here? And if not, why not?’” Mr. Burdick recounted. “And he was able to go to the city manager and work with the (city) council and said, ‘Look, the citizens are seeing this show and asking why don’t we have this service.’”

After realizing how helpful a paramedics service could be, Mr. Crabtree worked the political process to make it a reality. He joined a committee that sponsored a bill for Arizona’s first state paramedic program.

Glendale, Phoenix and Tucson were the first in the state to put firefighters through paramedics school. It wasn’t long until Glendale had its own paramedics truck, also called Rescue 51.

Mr. Shaver, who was handpicked by Mr. Crabtree to go through paramedic training, said new paramedics had to be trained rather than hired from outside because the job was such a new concept.

“There was no other paramedics in the world,” Mr. Shaver said. “I mean, it didn’t exist. It was a new thing. You couldn’t hire a paramedic, you had to train a paramedic.”

Mr. Shaver said he remembers the New York fire department not seeing a need for paramedics at the time. Today, nearly every fire department in the country staffs paramedics.

Glendale’s Rescue 51, which Mr. Shaver served on, was busy, having to cover a 20-30 square mile area, responding to calls across the Valley.

Other impacts

When more paramedics were trained, it became more efficient to do away with the rescue trucks and staff paramedics on the fire engines. Mr. Crabtree led Glendale to become the first Valley fire department with a paramedic on every engine company.

The most visible change Mr. Crabtree made to the department was changing the fire engines from red to what the department calls chrome yellow. After Lester Hillis, the department’s only on-duty death in its history, was struck and killed by a vehicle while driving a fire engine, Mr. Crabtree commissioned a study of which colors were most visible on emergency vehicles. Yellow and lime green both outperformed red, but Rural Metro Fire used lime green for its vehicles, so Mr. Crabtree chose yellow.

His former firefighters said Mr. Crabtree always fought for the best equipment, both gear and fire engines, and tried to make the firehouses as homey as possible.

Mr. Crabtree started the department’s first hazmat and technical rescue teams. He also started a safety committee in the 1980s and, at Mr. Burdick’s suggestion, made the unpopular choice of disallowing smoking in the firehouses. A few months later, Glendale’s city manager followed suit and banned smoking inside city buildings.

Mr. Burdick said this change was both to set a good example for fire safety and for the health of his firefighters.

“We’ll put an air pack on your back so you don’t breathe smoke, why would be want you to sit around the station and breath smoke?’” Mr. Burdick said.

Mr. Crabtree also started Glendale’s first program of firefighters installing smoke detectors in residents’ homes.

“(He was) very innovative. Always looking out for what’s the next best thing to come along,” Mr. Burdick said.

As fire chief, Mr. Crabtree expected near perfection from those who worked for him but also instilled a nature of caring, both for one’s fellow firefighters and for the residents they served.

“He was one of those guys who expected nothing but the best from you, but he was also one of those guys that you knew if something happened or went wrong or you needed help, he would be there. I saw it a thousand times,” Mr. Shaver said. “He was just a good guy.”