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Former Calgary fireplace chief Bruce Burrell, who led the division for 9 years that included the town’s historic 2013 floods, has died after a prolonged battle with a persistent lung illness.
Burrell died on Monday because of issues associated to a 2021 lung transplant, in line with a submit by his spouse, Jennifer, on a web based weblog that offered updates on his sickness. He was 65 years outdated.
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The ex-chief had been identified with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2017, a terminal illness that leads to scarring of the lungs and worsens over time.
“He fought demise as much as his closing breath. By no means identified a stronger will to dwell,” his spouse wrote.
Burrell was the pinnacle of the Calgary Fireplace Division from 2005 to 2014, being employed out of Halifax the place he led that metropolis’s response to the devastation of Hurricane Juan in 2003.
He commanded the Calgary Emergency Administration Company — a response group he helped develop — all through the 13-day native emergency throughout Calgary’s 2013 floods. When he retired in 2014 to return to household in Nova Scotia, metropolis officers praised him for his efforts to modernize the hearth division and set sturdy benchmarks.
Burrell was named the full-time fireplace chief of the yr by the Canadian Affiliation of Fireplace Chiefs in 2012, a corporation he additionally served because the president of between 2009 and 2011.
“Chief Burrell introduced a level of dedication unmatched by many to firefighter security,” the CAFC wrote in a social media submit Wednesday. “He can be remembered.”
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