Chris Mc Loone (pictured above), a longtime volunteer with Weldon Fire Company in Glenside and an editor at Fire Apparatus Magazine, published a piece last month about McKinley Fire Company’s (Elkins Park/Abington Township) newly promoted Deputy Chief, Chris Olimpo.

“Thanks for the story Chris M., and for granting our guy’s “wish”. We think our supporters will enjoy reading it as well! We’re proud to have D/C Olimpo in our ranks,” McKinley Fire Company said in a post.

The story is here. An excerpt:

Just about the entire time I’ve known Chris, he’s been an officer. We were both training officers around the same time, and we were inside on any number of working jobs over the years. In fact, it was inside on a job that I first “met” him, if that’s what you’d like to call it. I was still so new and didn’t really know anyone from the other township fire companies. I was on a hoseline going into a basement. I was backing up the nozzleman, who, once down the steps, quickly located the fire and wanted to let someone know. These were the days before fire apparatus were equipped with two-way radios for every firefighter on the rig. So, the nozzleman turned around to me and yelled through his face piece, “I need an officer!” There were people behind me who weren’t behind me initially on the steps, and I turned around to the person behind me, who I couldn’t see, and yelled through my face piece, “I need an officer!” It was Chris behind me, and he didn’t understand what I said—probably because being so new I was probably not intelligible. So, I yelled it again, to which he replied, “I AM AN OFFICER!” Not quite the way you want to meet other fire company lieutenants when you’re still one of the newbies. But, the fire went out without any more yelling.

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