Longtime volunteer spent 40 years helping department grow
Geyserville Fire Chief Paul Pigoni is retiring after fighting fires and responding to emergencies in his community for the past forty years – or, unofficially, forty-two.
“Officially I started when I turned 18. In reality I had been going to calls with my father for a couple years before, since he was a volunteer. That was what my inspiration was: since he did it, it was something I wanted to do. If it was a really bad call he’d make me sit back, but sometimes he’d let me get really close,” Chief Pigoni said.
Pigoni has held the title of Chief for ten years. And although he dedicated four decades of his life to what began as the Geyserville Volunteer Fire Department and became, in 1996, Geyserville Fire Protection District, Pigoni has only received compensation for his service for the past six years. (He has maintained his private sector job selling John Deere tractors and equipment, a job he will continue after retiring from the district.)
Pigoni has seen considerable change come to Geyserville Fire during his 40-year tenure, and he himself initiated some of that change.
“One of the first things that I recognized by growing up here, and having so much family here, was being seven miles from Healdsburg and 10 miles from Cloverdale, in the event of a medical emergency we were kind of hung out to dry for a while. There were no resources close by. So in 1977, I became the first EMT in our fire department,” Pigoni said.
“At that time the fire department, we were beginning to get called out to medical aids. But we just kind of flew by whatever first aid training we’d had. We didn’t have any intense training. That’s the reason why I went to the EMT program. As years went by, more and more folks became certified… to now, over half of our volunteers are EMTs.”
As the fire department’s capacity to provide emergency medical care improved, so too did the equipment used to fight fires.
“There was the old ways that we did things. I have to say at the time my father was also very progressive and was instrumental in helping the department to evolve and improve and become more modern. Back in the early days, we were proud of our equipment but all of it was either homemade and home repaired almost after every call,” Pigoni said.
“You could go to the call and come back and you were happy you made it to the call and from the call. But you had to work on the engine for a few hours to make it ready for the next one. And today we have a fleet parked out there that is second to no one’s.”
Pigoni recalled some of the early vehicles used to fight fires: a 1953 Ford that was put to use in the 1970s, and an old GMC military vehicle that the firefighters gave new life thanks to the Healdsburg school district.
“It couldn’t hardly pull a hill if its life depended on it, so we ended up getting a V6 engine out of one of Healdsburg’s school buses that they had decided to surplus. We dropped the V6 in it, and it passed everything on the highway. It was unbelievable. We did that ourselves,” Pigoni recalled.
Volunteer firefighters used to be summoned by a siren. Then the department turned to pagers, and now they use cell phones. As technology has changed, so too has the feel of the fire station – which used to serve as a gathering place and focal point of the community.
“Forty years ago, the department was like a second family… We didn’t have cable TV back then and 70,000 channels to watch, and we didn’t have the internet. This was the place to come to spend your evenings, especially if there was a work project going on. Today there’s so many other things to do besides hang out at the fire house,” Pigoni.
Pigoni noted that change is always two-sided.
“Now it’s good that we have the money to pay to have those things done that we used to do ourselves. But there was a feeling of camaraderie, of being able to do everything ourselves, and that’s just not there today. Eighty percent of the folks on the fire department today don’t even live in the community. And that’s just the nature of the beast, Geyserville is a very expensive place to live.”
Although Pigoni was always looked to as a leader within the fire department, he never aspired to be the chief. He said he would rather fight fire than push paper any day.
“Years back, people would ask me, ‘With the passion and love you have for the fire department, why did you never become a paid firefighter?’ And to be quite honest, my answer was, if you’re a paid firefighter, you only get to go to a third of your calls, because that’s how the shifts work. Here in Geyserville, I’ve always had the opportunity that I’ve lived and worked locally and I could go to every call that I was aware of. I got to live my regular life plus I got to go to calls,” Pigoni said.
Pigoni wouldn’t change the past forty years for anything.
“There’s nothing that I think I could have done to better serve my community and my family in giving back – to make it a safer and better place to live. I don’t regret one minute of it. I’m proud of what we’ve – and again it’s not me – but I’m proud of what we have been able to accomplish in the past 40 years of the department. It’s something to be very proud of. I have no doubt it will continue to be the same great department that it’s been for years,” Pigoni said.
