Hoover fire Chief Chuck Wingate to retire Aug. 31

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Hoover fire Chief Chuck Wingate will be retiring on Aug. 31 after 42 years of service to the city, Mayor Frank Brocato announced at tonight’s Hoover City Council meeting.

Wingate came to the Hoover Fire Department in July 1975 from the Bluff Park Fire Department (before Bluff Park was annexed into Hoover). He was one of Hoover’s first paramedics and rose through the ranks and was named chief in 2009 when longtime Chief Tom Bradley retired.

Brocato, who served alongside Wingate in the Fire Department and later under him, tonight praised the work Wingate has done for the city.

“Through his leadership, we have a wonderful fire and emergency medical services system in the city of Hoover that all of us can be proud to be a part of,” Brocato said. “We rival any Fire Department in the country in terms of what we have  — the type of equipment we have,” Brocato said.

It was on Wingate’s watch that the Insurance Services Office this year upgraded the Hoover Fire Department from a Class 2 insurance rating to a Class 1, the highest insurance rating a fire department can achieve.

Only 12 of the 1,500 or so fire departments in Alabama have achieved that rating, and only 178 of the 49,000 fire departments in the nation have done so, Brocato said.

When Hoover’s Fire Department was inspected last year, the initial rating came back as a Class 2 once again, but Wingate found some small adjustments the department could make to get re-evaluated and have the rating raised to a Class 1, Brocato said.

Hoover Council President Gene Smith said it would have been easy to stay content with the Class 2 rating, but Wingate made the extra effort to move the department forward. “You made the extraordinary even better,” Smith said.

Wingate, a man of few words tonight, said he didn’t achieve the Class 1 rating by himself. It was because of the work of many leaders in the department, he said.

Wingate isn’t the only top Fire Department official stepping down. Battalion Chief Rick Patterson, the department’s chief of operations who had been with the department 38 years, just retired on Aug. 1.

Brocato tonight said that he plans to fill the fire chief job from within the department. Five firefighters met the qualifications for the chief’s position, and four of them applied, he said. They are Battalion Chiefs Clay Bentley and Neal DePiano and Captains Nathan Hinds and Duane Prater.

Brocato said he interviewed all four last week and will appoint a new chief at the Sept. 5 City Council meeting.