Erik Holt

That fire board's number one priority was to put a permanent chief in place.

So those people were my board that I worked for.

As we were just kind of talking about the grand scheme, like tribalism takes effect and there's always an axis for us.

And so I was hired September, 2022 to be the fire chief on a permanent basis, which was great for my family, which was working great.

Got to work, rebranded this department that I thought that's what needs to take place.

Like it just has this bad funk to it.

It needs to be washed and rang out and kind of represented to the community.

in a higher professional standard.

And so got to work doing that.

We went recruiting.

I told you about my guys, Patch was one and Randy is the other guy.

My captains came on board.

They were studs, man.

And we just got to work and built.

How big was the city that you guys were serving?

So the district was 66 square miles, a population of between 55 and 6,500, depending on census, right?

Okay.

So pretty decent sized.

I mean, I don't know what the city is, but probably, you know, the greater Kalispell area is close.

I think it's pretty close because our Woodland Park, Colorado was just down, it's like 10 to 15,000 people.