ROCKLAND — Rockland Fire Chief Charlie Jordan Jr. has announced his intention to retire from the position effective May 1. Jordan simply said, “It was time.” May 1 will mark Jordon’s 25th year with the fire department, 10 of them as chief.

“I’ve done what I’ve set out to do and I think it’s time to let someone else have a crack at it,” said Jordan. “Hopefully we’ve moved the ball forward and it just seems like a reasonable time. I started as a firefighter with the call division in May of 1989, worked up to lieutenant, then captain and then when Chief [Raymond] Wooster retired in 2003, none of the full-time guys were looking at taking the job, so I applied and was selected. It’s a younger person’s job, but I have enjoyed everything about it for 10 years, enjoyed the job overall for 25.”

Jordan said there was no one currently applying for the job he will vacate.

“We’re hoping we may have an internal candidate or two,” he said. “I would certainly leave that part of it up to the city, the administration and council and stay out of it. It would certainly be nice to think that over the years we have certainly brought some people along who could step right in.”

Jordan said that an important part of the job is just letting his people do their job.

“I think that not getting in the way of the guys,” he said. “A lot of this job is just letting the natural talent here take its course. We have some very talented, very dedicated people here. They all come in and do their best every day. As chief of the department, a lot of times the best thing to do is just stay out of their way.”

Jordan said that in addition to responding to emergencies, the fire department is responsible for cleaning snow from around the city’s 200 fire hydrants.

“We actually have a reasonably specific way that we do it” he said. “We have what we call a bare ground policy, or close to a bare ground policy. Our guideline is we would want the hydrant clean the way we would want it cleaned if we lived in that neighborhood and our fire protection depended on it. Generally, it’s the shift that’s working that day that goes out. Sometimes I go out with them, I’m certainly not going to say I go a lot with them, but sometimes I do. There are five or six people who go out and normally in an eight- to nine-hour day; depending of course on the volume of emergency calls, we can usually knock it out.”

Rockland’s fire and EMS call volumes have varied over the last 10 years, from a low of 1,800 to a high of 2,500 for a year.

“We’ve settled into about 2,100 calls a year for fire and EMS. Obviously the fire calls have dropped off. I think that fire prevention, code enforcement and inspections have a lot to do with that,” he said.

Jordan said he has always felt that fire and EMS have had a “fair hearing” form the city.

“The administration and the council have always been interested in hearing absolutely what we had to say and generally have been completely supportive of us. I couldn’t have asked for any better people working for me and I couldn’t have asked for better people to work for. My wife and I live in Rockland, we’re not going anywhere. I’ve always felt it was good for someone to come out of the private sector and work in government for a little bit, and then go back into the private sector. Now I kind of have a desire to get back to that. It was certainly a great place to work. It’s great when you have the support of the citizens, council and administration and working with a group of people who come to work everyday wanting to do their best,” said Jordan.

Jordan stressed that the retirement was not allowing him to not work. He is 52 and feels as if he still has 20 good years of work left in him.

“I’m going to go back into the real estate valuation and appraisal business,” he said. “The real estate thing is something that’s been in my family for a couple of generations. My grandmother started in it, my parents were brokers since the 1960s and I went toward the analysis side of it. It’s just the right time. A bigger sin than leaving too early is staying too long.”

Contact Chris Wolf at news@penbaypilot.com.