By Nathan Duke
Staff Writer

Now that the transition of fire and emergency medical services to the Town of Candia Fire- Rescue Department is complete, Candia Fire Chief Rudy Cartier said he wants to open a two-way communication with residents.

“I want to start to get citizen and business groups together to see what their thought process is of what we do now as a department and what they think we should do,” he said. “I want there to be no misconceptions. I’d like to get a good dialogue going with the citizens of Candia.”

The transition was officially made during a transfer ceremony on Friday, April 1. The transfer ended a 79-year tradition when the responsibility for the town’s fire department operations were handed over to the Town of Candia Fire-Rescue Department by the Candia Volunteer Firefighters Association.

The fire chief will now have full operational responsibility for the department and will report to the board of selectmen. Cartier, who served as the association’s fire chief since 2002, was appointed by the board on March 7 to serve a three-year term as the town department’s first chief.

Though the association will still exist, it will now focus its efforts to being a benevolent association to support fire department members.

Selectman Chairman Clark Thyng said the transition was a smooth one.

“I was very pleased with how smoothly this transition had occurred,” he said. “The work done by the committee and the spirit of cooperation that existed actually made the process enjoyable.”

Candia’s fire department is made up of 31 volunteer members. Cartier said the fire and emergency service workers are currently working for free.

“As of right now, no one is getting paid for any of their work,” he said. “We would like to have full-time guys eventually, though.”

Now that the transition has taken place, department members will be able to spend less time on administrative aspects of the job and more on training.

“(Before the transition), the department was being run like a business,” said Cartier. “We had a president, a secretary and a board of directors. Some people were doing a lot of things like fundraising or administrative work instead of devoting their time to learning emergency services training.”

The chief hopes to now engage the men in more emergency training. Starting in May, department members will meet on Wednesday nights to take part in more search and rescue operations.

“The members are very excited about training,” said Cartier. “We will be able to get a few abandoned buildings to use for search and rescue operations. We have a smoke generator, so we can simulate conditions.”

Though the ceremony to honor the transition took place on April 1, the Fire-Rescue Department was created on March 14.