 January 27th, 2007
The chaplaincy was established 18 years ago and now serves all of the fire agencies in the
greater sacramento area. In the last calendar year (2006) we responded to 219 calls to the
field to assist firefighters and victims of events they responded to. We are involved in weddings,
funerals, public events or where ever we might be needed as determined by those
in leadership with in the fire service. As an example, a fire chaplain responded to both the
Oklahoma bombing and the world trade center disaster as members of the urban search
and rescue team from Sacramento.
There are fire chaplains from all the agencies in Sacramento and placer counties who respond
to emergency calls for assistance and their primary duty as fire chaplain is to ensure
the emotional, physical and psychological welfare of the firefighters we are responding to
and responsible for. We do this as crisis interventionists who are trained in critical incident
stress management training and through faith based training offer privately.
Our scope of response includes:
- Natural death
- Fatal auto accident or structure
- fire
Firefirghter down or injured
- Multiple casualty incidents
- Disaster - natural and man made
- Coordinate with local agencies in time of crisis
Chaplains are often called to the scene of an incident to bring both comfort and to those
have suffered a personal and material loss.
The Sacramento area fire chaplains are dedicated to assisting the fire service whenever
and wherever it is requested.
Chaplain Ward Cockerton
Senior Chief Fire Chaplain
Sacramento Area Fire Chaplaincy
4425 Dudley Blvd
McClellan, CA 95662
(916)929-FIRE
Reprinted from GUNS AND HOSES · 2007
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