Humble City Council approved the appointment of David Langenberg as the city’s next fire chief at its May 24 meeting. Prior this, Langenberg spent time at the Cy-Fair Volunteer Fire Department and the Village Fire Department near Memorial City. Since joining the city of Humble Fire Department, Langenberg has focused on his long-term vision for the department, such as how many total firefighters are needed. The city’s fiscal year 2018-19 budget approved by Humble City Council at its Sept. 13 meeting allocated $632,979 to fund six new positions within the department. Where did you work before coming to Humble? My job prior to this was working for the Village Fire Department in the Memorial City area. I was there for almost 17 years. When I left, I was in the position of deputy fire chief. When I was 16 years old, I signed up to volunteer at the Cy-Fair fire department. My initial goal in life was to go into the Navy. I was trying to get into Annapolis and [was told] my application was great, but I needed extracurricular activities. So, I asked for advice [and was told to] become a volunteer firefighter. I went to the local fire department … and that exposed me to the fire service, and I never wanted to get away from it. All of my life goals changed at that point, and I decided I wanted to be in the fire service. What was it that made you decide you wanted to be in the fire service? I just remember the adrenaline feeling of I’m going into a fire, and that completely boggles the mind because your whole life you’ve been trained to go away from fire. [There was an] adrenaline rush that came with that, and then afterwards, it wasn’t like the adrenaline rush went away because you were genuinely helping people. The idea of helping this community you grew up in … and being a part of something bigger than you. Why is the department adding six new positions this year? The idea behind that is so we can move some staffing around and staff a second fire [engine]. Currently we have one fire apparatus that is manned for the entire city. And then we have two ambulances that are staffed. And those two ambulances that are staffed, they are running all the time. So, on a pretty regular basis we have a need [to run] a third ambulance. But the way that we staff it when we need it is to take two [people] off the fire engine. So, when you do that, our fire engine goes down to two people, which reduces our fire protection for the city and reduces the number of staffing we have for an incident that comes in. What are the most common calls the department responds to? About 75 percent of our calls are EMS calls. Those are a wide variety, from “I stubbed my toe, and I can’t drive myself to the hospital” to “My husband or wife has fallen on the ground and [is] unconscious.” There is a wide gamut of calls. How does the city’s high daytime population affect the department? We have a nighttime population of about 15,000 but a daytime population of ten times that at least. Most of our mutual aid calls [for help from other departments] are during the day when we have that higher population. During the night, we are staffed appropriately. During the day, it’s a roll of a dice whether or not we’re going to need mutual aid. We try to handle everything we can by ourselves, so we don’t call mutual aid if we don’t need it, but we will call [for help] if we need it without hesitation. What have you been focusing on since starting as fire chief? One of the things I wanted to do was start long-term planning. [I’m] trying to determine benchmarks and standards for how many firefighters we need within the department. I’m still evaluating all of that. But when we get to that point, that’s when we are going to go to City Council and ask, “What level of service do you want to provide, and where would you like us to be?” And I will give the statistics and what we need to get to that level of service. So that is a big emphasis on what I’m doing. What short-term changes have you implemented since starting? There have been some short-term things as well, such as updating policies and procedures ... and defining certain things ... such as a promotional policy. One example was, before the administration said “This is the best person for the job” and they picked, it wasn’t a defined promotion policy. And the guys here, that is one of the things they needed.