Meet Mark Forey, the newly elected Chief of the Crystal Beach Volunteer Fire Department. Mark assumed the role of Chief about three weeks ago after having served as Assistant Chief for the last two years. A Crystal Beach resident, he has been with the department for 14 years as both a firefighter and EMS medic. Chief Forey has been instrumental in helping introduce new training programs to enable all firefighters to achieve state level Firefighter Certification. This training is currently underway will members of the Crystal Beach, High Island, and Port Bolivar departments. “We are consolidating training with the other departments on the Peninsula so we are all unified on the same team…between the three departments we have 30-35 people training once a week, as firefighters.”
Anthony Scopel, Battalion Chief and Certification Coordinator, is in charge of training. Anthony has been a firefighter for over 20 years and is certified as a Master Firefighter. He has developed a training program to teach courses that meet the requirements set forth by the Texas Commission on Fire Protection.
Participating in the same training process are 5 Junior Firefighters, young people 15-18 years of age. Matt Summers, Crystal Beach Firefighter, is the training director for the Junior Firefighters. They are not allowed to fight fire on a live incident, but they take part in all the training exercises. According to Scopel, “this is beneficial to the community because these young men and women going into this program will be the next generation of firefighters that we have, already trained and ready to go.”
(L to R) Chief Mark Forey, Junior Firefighter Training Coordinator Matt Summers, and Battalion Chief Anthony Scopel
The Crystal Beach Volunteer Fire Department has been serving Crystal Beach and the Bolivar Peninsula since 1970. For more information, go to www.cbvfd.org.
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Congratulations, Mark, on your advancement to Fire Chief CBVFD! I know the department will be very pleased to have you with many new opportunities.
Take care,
Randall K. Rogers, RN, EMT-P (LP)
‘Old member’ (1991-2004)
Just an update. I tried the following link but got a message that the site is expired/pending renewal.
Just wanted to let you know
http://www.cbvfd.org/
Lovely Webpage, Keep up the beneficial work. Thanks.