GREENSTONE — The municipality’s new fire chief is settling in well and said that his first three weeks on the job have been a great start to his time in the community.
Adam Lopatka was officially appointed as Greenstone’s fire chief last month and officially took over the office in early September.
Lopatka said that the community so far has been extremely welcoming to him and his family as they settled in the community.
“So far, everything's been really, really wonderful. My family, so, my wife and I have three daughters as well, we settled in Nakina, we bought a house up there,” he said.
“Very wonderful, peaceful community. Everyone's been very, very welcoming, helpful, reaching out, introducing themselves. It's that classic kind of small town feel.”
Greenstone Fire and Emergency Services operates four volunteer fire stations within the municipality and Lopatka said that it’s a great crew that he’s glad to work with.
“So everything's going really well so far. I'm really happy to have met the majority of the firefighters and the teams that are on the front lines. [They’re] a really great group of people,” he said.
“This visible service is well equipped, very well trained, has a lot of people that really have a lot of heart and that's really good because it's easier to work with that.”
Most recently, Lopatka has had members of his new crew participate in automobile extraction and rescue training to keep their skills sharp as they compete with the areas treacherous winter roads.
“Highway. 11 is a major corridor that runs through the entire municipality, well, over 200 kilometres of it. And that's in addition to all the other highways that lead to the other communities in the area that we cover.” he said.
“But there is a significant amount of travel traffic that comes through here, transport traffic. all kinds of different road users, everybody from, you know, locals, recreational to commercial. So it's really important that we're well prepared to deal with any incidents.
