Changing of the Guard: New local fire chiefs

David Macy is the new Bridge Creek Fire Chief, following the recent retirement of BCFD Chief John Craft.

Bridge Creek, Amber, and Tuttle are all under new leadership in the last few months, but the area’s fire departments have been working together to ensure the area would be protected.

Tuttle Fire Chief Ryan Allen attested to the quality of the BCFD.

“I think there will be a great working relationship between the departments,” Ryan said last week. “I have had the opportunity to talk with the new Bridge Creek chief a couple times and everyone has been encouraging.  I have also had the opportunity to train with the Bridge Creek Fire Department personnel and they are a very talented department.  I believe there are great things to come relating to the services that will be provided with the joint efforts of both Bridge Creek and Tuttle.”

Outgoing Chief John Craft said of Macy, “I believe he is the right man for the job. He’s highly trained, experienced in management and has a servant’s heart. He’s got some great ideas and goals to help the department move forward in meeting the ever growing calls for service and benefitting the citizens of Bridgecreek. I’m truly excited for the department and can’t wait to see the progress and growth under his leadership.”

Macy is a career firefighter for the Oklahoma City Fire Department, and then on his days off from there, he will serve BCFD as a volunteer. While he is paid for one, he says he prefers the brotherhood of the volunteers.

“We have a great group of people,” Macy said last week. “We have a great group of folks. We’re on track to hit around 750 calls this year, so we stay pretty busy. One thing I tell you about being on both sides of the fence here as a career firefighter and a volunteer fire firefighter, you hear the term Brotherhood and the Brotherhood of the career fire service doesn’t compare at all to the Brotherhood of volunteer fire service. It’s not the same as much as we’d like to believe that it is. Many times, the full-time firefighters, when we leave the fire station at 7 a.m. in the morning we go four or five, six, eight different ways we may go an entire 24 hours or until four days after without speaking with each other until we come back for our next shift.  In the volunteer fire service, we rely on each other each and every day because we’re not always responded with the exact same people and we also rely on those departments who are around us. If you look at Blanchard, Newcastle, Amber and Tuttle, we’re individual fire departments but we always rely in each other every single day. We work closely together and make things happen. Great group of gentlemen that selflessly give of their time, that leave family gatherings, spend time away from their kids and stuff to go help others, sometimes at the most inopportune times.”

Macy began his career in the fire service back in Hennessey, Oklahoma, and worked for the volunteer fire service and the volunteer ambulance service there. He started in September of 1994, and became a career firefighter in 2000.

He began volunteering with Bridge Creek at the end of 2019, just prior to COVID-19, then had this opportunity, when Chief Craft decided to retire, to become the chief.

Macy moved to the Tuttle area back in 2015.

“It was one of those deals where I was really getting tired of the big city and decided to move somewhere a little further out,” Macy said. “It was more country living that I was used to where I grew up at. So, I landed in that area and was excited at the opportunity to help the community and volunteer. I wasn’t even out of high school. I started EMT basic school in the summer between my junior year and my senior year of high school. So, as a volunteer first-responder, I was able to start covering shifts on the ambulance there. On my eighteenth birthday, I ran my first two ambulance calls. I covered the ambulance during the day while I was in high school, because we were typically short. I carried a pager, and if we got a an ambulance call during the day, then I would leave school and go run the ambulance call and then come back. One of them was a fall at the senior center. Then the second call was that evening. I transported a football player from the football game.”

It wasn’t long after that when Macy made himself a hand during a day in Oklahoma history that will live forever in infamy.

“Right after that, on April 19th of 1995,” Macy said, “they had the Oklahoma City bombing. Eighteen years old, senior year, and happened to be in Oklahoma City at a tour of Channel 9 when that took place. Initially, I went to Baptist Hospital and volunteered at the ER for just a little bit and then got on an ambulance from there.”