Family of fire: Father and son on same department
Published 11:49 am Monday, April 7, 2014
For the first time in the history of the Albert Lea Fire Department, a father and son are both employed as firefighters.
Lee DeVries, father, at left, and son Jordan DeVries both work as firefighters for the Albert Lea Fire Department. – Sarah Stultz/Albert Lea Tribune
Lee DeVries, 54, started with the department in June 1989, and his son Jordan began in October 2011.
“It’s good to be able to help and hopefully make a difference in someone’s life,” Lee said.
The father started as a volunteer firefighter in Hollandale for six years, and after testing for a full-time position with departments in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Omaha, he ended up in Albert Lea.
In 2005, he was promoted to rank of captain. He will celebrate his 25th anniversary with the department in June.
Jordan, 23, said seeing his father as a firefighter is all he has known.
“Seeing how he’s come up through the ranks in my lifetime, I definitely looked up to him thinking maybe that’d be possible for me someday,” Jordan said.
He started in a temporary opening in 2011, and in March 2013 his position became permanent.
The two men said they work on different 24-hour shifts — one is on the red shift and one is on the blue — but they sometimes cross paths when multiple shifts of firefighters are called in to respond to larger fires.
Lee said though there have been challenges to the position over the years — including injuries — there hasn’t been anything that kept him away for too long.
Firefighters Trevor DeRaad, Kurt Wallace and Jordan DeVries discuss the stabilization of a flipped Ford Escape during an extracation training last June in Albert Lea at Allen’s Tow-N-Travel. The firefighters used the Escape to practice multiple rescue scenarios. – Brandi Hagen/Albert Lea Tribune
One time he recalled getting hit by a falling garage wall, and another time he said he got an electric shock during a thunderstorm.
He recalled fighting the Farmland fire in 2001, which he said was probably his biggest fire on record. He said he fought that for five days with only a few hours of rest during the entire span.
Though Jordan saw what his father went through, he said it didn’t scare him off.
“You’re either the type of person who wants to get into this or you don’t,” Jordan said.
He said he likes
coming to work not knowing what he’s going to experience the rest of the day.
“It really keeps you on your toes,” Jordan said. “It can add to the anxiety too, but I enjoy that more than going to a job where you sit at a desk for nine hours a day.”
The men said they like the variety their job offers — they respond to fires, serious car crashes, conduct inspections, among other duties.
“I just enjoy not knowing what you’re going to run into, and of course helping people out and making a difference,” Jordan said.
When they’re not working, Lee and Jordan said they enjoy ice fishing with Jordan’s older brother. They traveled to Lake of the Woods this winter to do so.
Being a firefighter must travel in the family’s veins. The older brother is also one in Hibbing.
They credited the strength of their mother, both when her children were small and still today as she has two sons and her husband in the line of duty.
The Albert Lea Fire Department was organized in 1879.
