(FARGO, ND) – After 36 years of fire service, including 13 with the Fargo Fire Department as Chief, Steve Dirksen is ready to hang up his fire gear and turn in his badge.
“It’s been a great career,” he said. “Going from a wet behind the ears firefighter just wanting to go on calls to being able to end my career leading one of the largest communities in the country is a great capstone for me.”
Fargo Mayor Dr. Tim Mahoney says Dirksen has created a family culture. That culture has included increased health checks. Mahoney said the health checks came after a retired firefighter died a year later from a heart attack.
“It’s unbelievable that a guy could be a firefighter carrying heavy weights or loads and then have a heart attack like a year out on retirement,” he said. “So we’ve worked real hard on health safety issues.”
Prior to coming to Fargo, Dirksen served as a member of the Sioux Falls Fire Department. Throughout his 13 years in Fargo, Dirksen says he’s seen his share of change in the Fargo community. That includes more than just a population increase – from just over 100,000 people 13 years ago, to nearly 135,000 today.
But there’s been change at the department as well.
“Three of our fire stations we’ve been able to remodel and update through that process and add an eighth,” he said. “Those are some pretty big things for the community to be proud of, as well. We’re updating our facilities to make sure we have good places to work, and we’re adding to it to make sure that we’re responding in areas of town that we expand.”
The department is also an ISO class one organization, the highest rating a fire department can have in the country. There are only 124 ISO 1 departments in the United States.
Mahoney says the rating impacts the community.
“That decreases the fire insurance rates for everybody around the city,” he said. “I don’t think the public always knows that, but because we’re very diligent about what we do, we’ve helped to decrease your insurance premiums.”
Assistant City Administrator Brenda Derrig, while only being in city administration for two years, has been in the city for 33 years – and in her previous role in engineering, she says she got to work with Dirksen extensively in that role. She credits him for the growth of the department.
“He’s just been a very integral part of collaboration with all of our departments as we’ve grown,” she said.
Derrig and Mahoney both said Dirksen’s shoes will be hard to fill.
“When you have a really great employee like Chief Dirksen, it’s always hard to fill their shoes,” Derrig said. “But we always look forward to the next person that’s ready to step in and continue that legacy that he’s leaving behind.”
Mahoney said the chief was always ready to lend a helping hand.
“He is a person that always stood up and said, ‘How can I help?’ Mahoney said. “Typically, if I had different issues or problems that we’d have, we’d sit down and say, ‘Chief, here’s the problem we have. What can we do to solve it?”
He said Dirksen would ‘come back with some resolutions or thoughts.’
Mahoney said Dirksen is nationally recognized for his work as a fire chief.
Dirksen will be moving to northeast South Dakota for his retirement, where he will also be working for an analytics company.
