Photo by Mike Lamb At age 34, Chris LeTendre is one of the youngest fire chiefs in the area.

SLAYTON — When Chris LeTendre joined the Slayton Fire Department 13 years ago, he never dreamed that he would eventually become fire chief.

But at age 34, LeTendre is in charge of a 30-person fire department. He says, “it’s how it worked out.”

It did help that his father (Mike) has been member of the department ever since he can remember while growing up.

“I’ve been down here (fire hall) my whole life pretty much. I got on shortly after I graduated college. I was on for five years, and then I did the training officer for four years. And then I was a second assistant chief for one year, and I took the chief position over on the third year. It’s been quite a ride,” he said.”I was vocal about some things that I wasn’t happy with that we were doing. That led me to being in charge.”

LeTendre is very passionate about the fire department.

“My family is number one and this place is number two. My second family. All 29 guys could be sitting in here and one gal, but they can all be in here, and they will explain to you that it’s your second family. We’re all here for each other. Moving? We’re there helping. I know a lot about fire service. I don’t know all of it. I’m still going to training every year to perfect my skill and craft,” he said.

LeTendre shares that passion with his father, who has 30 years of experience in the department. He says his dad plays a crucial part in the department.

“We often jump in the vehicle and away we go and talk for three hours about the fire department. I can bounce my frustrations off him. And that’s really good, because then you can try to understand it,” he said.

LeTendre calls the members who work in the department “the machine” that makes it all work. And leading them is easy. “There is a great group of people that we’ve got here,” LeTendre said. “It’s fun to watch the machine work. We get called to some bad stuff and they jump out of the truck with a serious face. It makes my job much easier.”

He credits the unity of the department to the family atmosphere that has been established through the years.

“We do a lot of family oriented things. So when your family or you have a member in your family that’s involved, you’re here all the time. Either washing trucks or we have a picnic or whatever. We try to do a lot of things to incorporate family, because it’s a big commitment. I mean, you get on, you gotta take firefighter one and two. It’s 144 hours of training. And that’s well beyond the required trainings. So we do 22 drills, a year. A lot of those are two to three hours a time. And we have meetings on top of that. Truck check nights. That’s all fire stuff,” LeTendre said. He estimates that the department responds to about 40-45 calls a year.

“Car accidents, missing people, help ambulance with lift assist and things like that. Carbon monoxide detector, smoke alarms, grain bin rescue. When nobody else can fix it, call the fire department because they got a bunch of tools. They’ll be able to fix it,” LeTendre said.

He says grain bin rescues are becoming a major issue. Some training exercises have focused on these rescues.

“We know so much more now than we used to of what’s going on and these things are getting publicized quite a bit more,” he said.

Besides farming mishaps, fire department members deal with a variety of tragedies. He urges department members to ask for help and talk it over with somebody.

“We’ve had a rough year and a half now. We’ve had some fatalities and some stuff like that. I feel myself I can handle things pretty well. I’m worried about my people. We done some debriefing stuff. And I’ve really worked hard at trying to get our people to talk. It’s OK to not be OK. And I just talk. I spent last weekend training in Brainerd. Half of the 12 hours was on cancer and suicide. So I told everybody, there’s measures in place. We’ve got people you can talk to,” he said. “If we have a bad call, everybody that’s involved with that call, we will talk about it. But a lot of people are ‘Yep, I’m fine. Yep, I’m fine.’ Well, 45 minutes to an hour later, we’re still on the phone talking about it.”

LeTendre said the department also receives support from the community and area businesses. “I got to give a lot of credit to our city, the administration, the city council. They support us very well. They get us what we need when we ask. And that’s big,” he said. “I mean, we do one big fundraiser a year to help purchase equipment and things like that. We’ve been supported very, very well. That that makes it easier that. Gets morale up. We got the tools we need to do our job.”

It’s that community support that helps LeTendre plan for the future. He wants to make sure

“Hopefully, in the next two to five years, we get some new trucks and maybe add on to our building. Just laying the groundwork,” he said. “It’s rewarding. You’re helping the community and there’s a lot of things you get to experience that you wouldn’t if you weren’t involved.”