This firefighter is retiring after nearly 35 years of dousing flames

• Tim Light has 34 and a half years of service
• He says the department has changed a lot for the better
• He’s looking forward to a long retirement

It was 1987 when Tim Light fought his first fire with the Kelowna Fire Department.

A vehicle clipped a gas pump, lighting the area ablaze.

Light was working backup to one of his mentors, Gary Brandel – a man of much larger statue, as wide as he was tall, Light said.

As they got closer to the fire, a tire from the car blew from the heat and scared Light, but the knowledge and strength of Brandel kept him calm.

“Afterwards, we did a tailgate meeting and he said it felt like I was pulling the hose back as he was trying to pull the hose in,” Light said with a smile.

“From the day you start in this profession, you have [brothers] … right now, I have 130 brothers.”

Light fought back tears as he recalled the moment; just one in a long 34-and-a-half-year career that will come to an end on Dec. 31 as he retired from the Kelowna Fire Department.

Light, a platoon captain, first volunteered with the Rutland department in 1984. He spent a few years there before he applied to Kelowna. After a stressful hiring process consisting of a fitness test, an aptitude test, and two interviews, he got the job.

Light said things have changed a lot over his decades of service to the community.

“We had old LaFrance trucks when I got hired… the trucks nowadays [have] enclosed cabs [and] intercom systems in them so we can all be talking back and forth,” Light told Kelowna10.

Not only have the trucks and equipment changed, but so has the attitude towards treating mental health within the fire department.

“When I got hired, if I had feelings, I was told to put them in my sleeve, put them in my backpack and leave them there,” Light said. “That kind of stuff is no longer frowned upon, it’s encouraged, which is good.”

Light said there are some calls he can’t talk about as they trigger raw, overwhelming emotions.

“They’ll go with me all the way through the rest of my life, there’ll be things that will trigger that memory… [the job] doesn’t come without its scarring.”

He said in B.C. there are resources to help with distress from the job. As a platoon captain, Light said part of his job is to recognize when his team needs to step away and talk to someone from the Critical Incident Stress team.

Light said he always made sure his team knew they had an outlet and provided them with phone numbers and appointments to take care of their mental health.

One of Light’s proudest moments over his career was when he and another firefighter were helicoptered into the trestles in the Kettle Valley to rescue a cyclist who fell over the edge and was badly injured. They secured the individual and she was flown to the hospital.

He said firefighters don’t often know the outcomes of the people they save after they’re brought to the hospital, but the girl rescued that day had a personal connection to the department.

“It turned out to be [the sister of] one of our Captains. She’s completely healed, she has a family,” Light explained.

After his many years of service, Light is looking forward to spending more time with his grandchildren and travelling with his wife.

“I just want to have a good long retirement.”