Mat-Su Borough promotes 4 fire officers

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough has installed chiefs in two of its rural fire departments.

Mahlon Greene, who until now had been filling in as a temporary chief, was tapped to head up the Willow and Caswell fire departments on a permanent basis.

“Mahlon has been an active Central Mat-Su Firefighter and assistant chief and has been in that department for 27 years of service to the Mat-Su Borough,” Mat-Su Borough Director of Emergency Services Dennis Brodigan said at a Mat-Su Borough Assembly meeting Sept. 16 during which a ceremony was held to install Greene and three other fire officers.

Though firefighter jobs at Central Mat-Su are by-and-large part time gigs, Greene’s full time employment was also in the firefighting realm. Until he recently left the position he spent years as the training specialist and education coordinator for the Alaska Fire Marshal’s Office.

The other department to get a new chief is the Butte Fire Department. Eric VanDusen had been filling in as temporary chief there and, like Greene, was made permanent chief.

VanDusen is a fourth-generation firefighter, Brodigan said at the ceremony. When not fighting fires in Butte he worked in the city of Palmer’s public works department. During a wildfire that threatened the Cedar Hills subdivision in late 2012 he drove his fire department pickup into a fire that had overtaken a fire engine to rescue three of its four-man crew. The fourth made it out safely on foot.

“He won the Medal of Valor and Medal of Courage for that feat and was also nominated as state of Alaska Firefighter of the Year in 2013,” Brodigan said.

Also promoted at the ceremony were Louis LaRousse and Jason Edmison, who were made assistant chiefs in Butte.

LaRousse has been fighting borough fires for 18 years and was honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force in 2003. He has fought fires on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson as a civilian.

Edmison is another 18-year borough veteran who is seeking a nursing degree at the University of Alaska Anchorage. In 2003 he was one of the youngest lieutenants in borough history. He was later promoted to captain and now assistant chief.

Both Butte and Willow lost their chiefs under less than ideal circumstances. Then-fire chief Lance Barve left the Willow department in October, 2012. The borough at the time said it was engaged in both a personnel investigation and in an investigation into how a house fire there was handled. Further details about neither were ever released.

Butte lost its fire chief in March of this year. The borough was effusive about the chief that departed, Charles Von Gunten, saying he had done a great job over 43 years of service.

Later, media reports were able to confirm that Von Gunten was let go in the wake of a fire at a Butte-area hangar in December, 2013, in which toxic fumes sent seven firefighters and one medic to the hospital, one of whom had been rendered unconscious in the burning building.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.