Blaze set life course
for fireman Al

By Sharon Resnick

Al Badgley is pragmatic. As the Haines Volunteer Fire Department training officer, he tries to base everything his department does on community needs.

In his first year on the job in 1988, the town suffered more than $1 million in fire damage and lost property, including from a fire at the Department of Transportation barn and one that gutted portions of the Captain’s Choice Motel.

“We decided that year it was best not only to train fire fighters, but also the community,” Badgley said. “And the best place to do that was in the school, starting with kids when they were young.”

Fire Safety Week for preschoolers through eighth graders, held each year at the fire hall, was the result. The hope was that kids would take what they learned home to their parents, Badgley said. “That way we could get a whole lot of people in the community talking about it.”

As the department starts into its third decade of prevention efforts, annual fire damage in town has averaged $90,400 the past 10 years. And some of Badgley’s lessons are paying off.

Last September, when a fire started in her Beach Road trailer home, 10-year-old Maggie Martin alerted her mother and three sisters to a smoke alarm, and the family followed an established emergency plan to escape the flames. Maintaining smoke alarms and a family escape plan are basics of Badgley’s school program. 

Yet for all his planning, Badgley recognizes the luck of the draw. Had he not watched his parents’ Lutak Inlet house burn down in February 1981, the year after he moved here, his life may have turned out very differently.

He had just returned from Texas, started a fire in the woodstove and gone to a neighbor’s for dinner. Something went terribly wrong.

At that time, there were no phones at Lutak and by the time a call could be made from the ferry terminal, the house was gone. Only an outdoor shed remained.

Luckily, Badgley’s suitcase was still in his car, so at least he had a change of clothes. “As I watched the firemen dealing with that, I decided then that I ought to learn how to do some of this stuff so that I could help someone out.”

He joined the volunteer fire crew and on his first call, a few weeks later, he helped battle the inferno that destroyed the south barracks building in Fort Seward. He was on scene from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

In 1985, Badgley took his first EMT class and also joined the ambulance crew. When former paid fireman Dick Jackson retired in 1987, Badgley applied for his job and got it. Up until then, his degree in wildlife and fisheries science limited him to seasonal work for the Department of Fish and Game.

“If the fire hadn’t of happened, I wouldn’t have become a fireman,” he said. “And, if I hadn’t gotten the full-time job as a paid fireman, I probably wouldn’t have been here to meet my wife, Crystal.” Crystal came to Haines from Pennsylvania in 1988 as a volunteer youth worker for the Haines Presbyterian Church.

“So, sometimes bad things cause good things to happen,” he said.

Each year, the fire department responds to about 30 calls and the ambulance crew is called out about 250 times, he said. About half the ambulance calls are for medical transports between the clinic and the airport. That added the need for a second paid fireman in the mid-1990s. “We needed to have one person driving and at least one other person in the back tending to the patient.”

Training community members to deal with medical emergencies is an ongoing part of Badgley’s job. Last week, it was a course in CPR, the use of the automatic external defibrillator and first aid for the general public. Soon, there will be another class for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Any organization or group can request a variety of training related to health and safety issues, he said.

Recently, a defibrillator was given to the Elks Club. Now, there are about 20 of them around town, Badgley said.

“We try to find high-volume areas and distribute them where they do the most good,” he said. “That’s why the Elks Club got one and the American Legion didn’t. There’s already one in the Bamboo Room and that’s right across the street from the Legion.”

About 500 residents have been trained to use the defibrillator, but anyone can use one, he said. “The machine talks to you and tells you what to do,” he said. “All you have to know how to do is to push the on-off button.”

Saving lives isn’t always so easy.

Badgley said his most dramatic emergency call was a helicopter rescue from a glacier when a local commercial flight went down.

“We were unaware of the injuries or even where the crash had really occurred,” he said. “We thought it was at Glacier Point. The helicopter that flew us in didn’t have room for everyone and wasn’t able to carry the two people we had back-boarded.

“The Coast Guard was called in, but it was starting to get dark. We were told we might have to leave people on the mountain overnight.”

No one was looking forward to that, he said. As it turned out, everyone was able to fit in. “I straddled a patient all the way to Juneau,” he said. “I was just standing there looking him in the face.”

Since 1997, Badgley and co-host Lyle Huff have presented the weekly Safety Report on KHNS. The report is Badgley’s way of trying to prevent accidents and to get word out to people who didn’t get his school safety talk.

“We have about 55 topics we can choose from to prevent people from getting hurt. The use of candles is one of the five major reasons for fires,” he said. Others include home heating, smoking and falling asleep, grease fires or forgetting something on the stove and electrical malfunctions.

In the Lower 48, arson and playing with matches are main causes, he said.

The 15-minute radio presentations include a lot of common sense, he said. “We tell listeners to be careful, to look at their options and not to think that they are invincible.”

The fire department and ambulance crew are always looking for trends that cause injuries and then try to come up with ways to prevent them. One year it was falls on the ice. Last year they gave away $25 discount coupons to help 35 people buy ice grippers.

“If we just gave them the ice grippers, they might not use them,” he said.

Badgley has seen a lot of changes for the good when it comes to fire safety in Haines since he began working for the fire department.

The extension of phone service allows people to call and get a quicker response, he said. There are fewer generators, which often start fires, and building construction has changed to include more sheetrock and better structural members, he said.

When Badgley isn’t at work, his main focus is his family and church. He has a 15-year-old son Hunter and a 13-year-old daughter Serena. He has been either an elder or deacon at the Haines Presbyterian Church for many years.

Badgley recognizes that a lot of people see him as the fire department because he is one of only two paid employees. “I am just one of 44 community members that volunteer their time to make Haines a safer place for everyone,” he said.

Others would give Badgley more credit. Elks Club leader Chip Strong, a former volunteer fireman, recently wrote to thank Badgley for securing a grant that paid for the club’s defibrillator. Badgley’s concern for people and his passion for continuing education have paid big dividends to the community, Strong said, citing unsolicited visits Badgley has made to check on elderly residents.

“He’s helped just about everybody here, even if they didn’t call 911 to ask for it,” Strong said. “He’s great like that.”