Gary Kerker has been selected by Chief Kaleiwahea to be Littlerock Fire
Rescue's new Assistant Chief. This volunteer position requires experience in
many areas, including business management, staff development and leadership,
technical writing, tactical and strategic planning, in addition to being a
firefighting/EMT.
Assistant Chief Kerker has been with Littlerock Fire Rescue for five years
providing firefighting services. Before that he was an administrative
volunteer utilizing his engineering experience with the construction of the
new station on Littlerock Road. Gary has served as a firefighter, a
Lieutenant, is an EMT, and regularly participates as an instructor for the
Thurston Fire and Rescue Training Consortium.
In addition to firefighting and EMT duties, Gary brings 24 years of
engineering and project management experience to Littlerock Fire Rescue. As a
senior engineer for Westin Engineering, Gary is responsible for developing and
managing requirement studies, strategic plans, best practice studies,
preparing design specifications, developing standard operating procedures,
standard maintenance procedures and electronic based documents including web
page authoring and browser based document management systems. Gary assists
cities and county governments such as Seattle, Detroit and Las Vegas with
developing more efficient operations. Gary will be utilizing this same skill
set to assist Chief Kaleiwahea with managing the operations of the Department.
The new Assistant Chief is also a hands-on person. Gary's electrical
engineering background and ability to diagnose and repair equipment has also
been a great asset to the District. He has at one time or another repaired
generators, electrical problems in the apparatus, radios, lighting and about
anything else that isn't working.
Gary and his wife Mary have lived in the district for 10 years, moving here
from Puyallup in 1992. Gary and his wife of 29 years have two sons. His oldest
son Scott, who was a member of Littlerock Fire Rescue, is starting his third
year as Acting Lieutenant firefighter/EMT for the City of Longview and
recently married. Bryce, who is also married, works for Washington State
University's Information Technology Section in Olympia. Bryce provides very
detailed technical services related to IT networks, PCs, servers, WAN/LAN
systems and at times has to fly throughout the state in support of WSU's
computer based systems.
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