PERSONALITIES: Fire marshal makes sure everything is up to code

Oct. 22—EAST WINDSOR — For 32 years, Richard Austin has been with the East Windsor Fire Department, starting as a volunteer firefighter and now, for almost 10 years, the local fire marshal.

Austin was born and raised in rural East Hartland, a section of Hartland.

Richard Austin

Who he is: Fire marshal for Broad Brook and Warehouse Point fire departments

Quote: A simple explanation of what he does is being an educator. "You're educating the public as to what the codes are and what they should do for public safety."

"You could do anything you wanted, basically," he said. "We spent most of our days in the woods with friends playing in a brook. Things that kids do. Riding bicycles. Walking a mile to your friend's house."

He said he wasn't much of a student in school until his parents sent him to Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia, something he said he wanted to do at the start of his sophomore year of high school.

"It changed me drastically," he said. "There's rules. You did something wrong, you got demerits. If you got too many demerits you spent the weekend walking around with a rifle over your head."

Upon graduation, Austin was accepted to The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, where he would have made an officer rank of second lieutenant.

"That was during Vietnam," he said. "Second lieutenants didn't do very well when you graduate from The Citadel. You'd go to Vietnam as a second lieutenant. A lot of them never came back."

He said he tried attending college, majoring in accounting, but in less than a year decided it wasn't for him. He enlisted in the Army, becoming a military policeman.

"I wanted to be a cop at the time," he said. So, I joined the Army, and was a cop."

After serving three years, mostly in Germany, he returned to Connecticut with the expectation of becoming a police officer here.

"I missed the state police exam by one day and they only gave one a year," he said.

He said a friend suggested working with him as a jeweler, and in 1969 started working with Lux Bond Green and Stevens in Hartford, where he worked until 1975.

"I quit them and started my own (jewelry) business. I work out of my house," he said, having moved to East Windsor during the career shift in 1975. "I only do trade work mostly. Unless you know of me and you have something you want done, then I'll do it for you. But mostly it's trade work."

In 1990, he became a volunteer firefighter, making his way up the ranks through the years.

"Now I'm the assistant chief, so I'm second in command," he said.

"About 2013, I put in for fire marshal school. I've been a marshal since 2014, and approximately two years ago I took over the whole town. The fellow that was fire marshal on the Broad Brook side resigned and they asked me to fill in part-time just to get it done. Then they opened the job up for bid and I put in for it and I got it too."

Now, he said, he is the fire marshal for both the Broad Brook Fire Department and the Warehouse Point Fire Department.

"I am the fire marshal for two separate fire districts," he said. "That's important, because I don't work for either one of them solely.

"I get along with everybody," he said about the camaraderie he has with both departments. "We work well together. Everybody works well with me and I'm happy about that. It works out well for the town's benefit, because I'm able to work with everybody in town. They don't care which district I'm working for."

His love for being a firefighter, he said, comes from his father, who was a volunteer firefighter in Hartland.

"I played around as a firefighter in Hartland," he said. "I was a cop in the service where I spent most of my time going to traffic accidents and that kind of thing. It snowballs on you. You like helping people and that's what you get to do."

As a fire marshal, Austin spends most of his time doing inspections of multifamily houses, businesses, car dealerships, and restaurants.

"Some of those, you only have to be there every three or four years," he said. "Some of them I have to do annually. Every restaurant, every place that serves liquor has to be done every year. It's a lot of work. They all have problems. They all have issues. Everybody does something wrong. They got a cord draped across the floor and then somebody's gonna trip on it. I can't allow that. Or they got daisy chain surge protectors together and you can't do that."

He said a simple explanation of what he does is being an educator.

"You're educating the public as to what the codes are and what they should do for public safety," he said.

When not educating people on fire safety, his other responsibility is investigating fires.

"They run you through it pretty good in the classes," he said, recounting fire marshal training. "Then you practice in the classes and you take a test. They'll have a mock fire or a mock fire scene and you have to tell them what happened in what order. Then they even make you go through a court scene where you've presented your information and you've made a determination that there was a candle on the table, it fell off and caught the couch on fire and they'll take you to court and make you prove that to them.

"I do love it," he said. "You never know when you're going. You never know what time you're going to get that phone call."

At 75, Austin said he isn't jumping in and out of fire trucks as much as he used to.

"I can still do that, but how long will I be able to do that?" he asked. "Now, I get in my car and I go to the scene and as soon as I get there, I'm investigating what's going on. I start talking to people, 'How'd the fire start? Where were you? When were you here? Did you see which window the fire was? At what time? Is anybody home?' Everything you need to ask. I'll spend the next 12 hours to two days investigating that fire scene. That's my job now. God forbid anybody's killed because that makes it even worse.

"It's very rewarding," he said. "Everybody that I talk to, that I've touched usually thanks me for doing my job. It's really rewarding. Everybody appreciates it."

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