Chelmsford Firefighters IAFF Local 1839

08/19/2026

Chelmsford Firefighters IAFF Local 1839 members attended the 58th IAFF Convention in Arlington, Texas last week, where delegates representing over 367,00 members of the International Association of Fire Fighters unanimously adopted a resolution censuring Chelmsford Fire Chief Gary Ryan.

Local 1839 had previously issued a unanimous vote of no confidence in Chief Ryan in June. Local 1839 cited longstanding concerns over unresolved staffing deficiencies, apparatus staffed below NFPA 1710 recommendations, communication failures, lack of advocacy for members health/safety, resource management, operational protocols, fiscal responsibilities and other related issues.

At the 58th convention, the IAFF’s highest decision making body, where delegates vote on resolutions and IAFF constitutional matters, the full body of delegates from across the United States and Canada took up and approved the censure of Fire Chief Gary Ryan, unanimously.

IAFF censures are formal public rebukes issued by the international union on behalf of its membership. Local 1839’s participation in the Arlington convention advanced our concerns to the international level, where the assembled delegates voted unanimously in concurrence with Local 1839’s concerns regarding Fire Chief Gary Ryan.

08/04/2026

Some have asked why we keep posting. We have made our point, the vote happened, time to move on.

Here is the answer. Chief Ryan has not acknowledged any of this with the membership. Not once has he addressed his people directly, not about the vote, not about the survey results, not about anything. Some have called these tactics bullying. We would call it a necessary action against a public figure with a history of using avoidance as a central leadership strategy. Say nothing, wait, hope it stops being talked about. It has worked for him before, but it is not working this time.

Ignoring something does not make it less real. It is not fiction just because you choose not to acknowledge it. That is exactly what has been happening here, and it’s what always happens.

This was never about a contract, the Chief is not involved in contract negotiations. This isn’t a tactic to gain benefits or extract concessions. This is about failed leadership. Lack of direction. Lack of support for the people who do this job every day. And it is about what the Town and its residents deserve in a fire chief, which is someone who shows up for the people he leads and serves, especially when it is hard.

We are not going away. This time, neither is the truth.

07/23/2026

On December 15, 2022, Chief Ryan sat on the Fire Station Study Committee alongside the Town Manager and union leadership. When asked whether three engines, no company officers, and cross staffing a ladder and rescue was adequate protection for Chelmsford, he said it was.

During that same time frame, Chelmsford has recorded the worst fire fatality rate of any Massachusetts department handling 300 or more incidents a year. 10 to 65 times higher than Boston, Worcester, and Cambridge.

Yet this Chief has never included a request for more staffing in a budget presentation, or in a public meeting, anywhere on the record. He will not say the word lieutenant unless it is to call it a bargaining demand, ignoring that his own voice carries the weight to help secure the supervision this department needs.

Residents deserve a fire department that gives them the best odds in an emergency, led by a Chief who puts their safety first, not one who’s driven by the sole goal of being a nice guy in order to protect his own job security.

07/15/2026

In any organization, a fire department, a corporation, a small business, communication flows downward from leadership. That is not a union position. That is a management principle taught in every leadership course and business school in the country.

When an entire workforce tells its leader that they have lost confidence in his leadership, the leader does not wait for them to come through an open door. He goes to them. He asks questions. He tries to understand what happened and why.

Think about your own workplace. If 94% of your coworkers told management they had no confidence in your boss, would you expect your boss to call a meeting and ask what went wrong? Or would you expect him to write a memo to his own supervisor defending himself and hope the whole thing blew over?

Chief Ryan chose the memo.

This matters to every resident in Chelmsford. When you call 911, you are not just relying on the firefighters who show up. You are relying on the system behind them. The chief, the structure. The chief makes sure the right resources get to the right place at the right time. Identifying that structure is not a failed labor negotiation tactic. It is a public safety question. And the person responsible for that structure has spent the weeks since a vote of no confidence isolated in his office, issuing a poor defense of his past actions, and making up excuses, instead of walking into a station and asking what went wrong.

He has made no attempt to move forward. No attempt to find common ground. No attempt to lead or manage the situation he is responsible for creating. Instead he issued a written rebuttal directed at the Acting Town Manager, blamed contract negotiations, and cited examples of collaboration he was not a part of.

This is consistent with everything else. The path of least resistance. The workaround instead of the fix. The complaint instead of the solution.

An open door policy is not leadership. It is a way of making yourself technically available while the people you are supposed to be leading carry every problem to you alone with the knowledge that it is likely nothing will be done about it. That is not managing an organization. That is waiting for problems to find you and hoping most of them don't.

The question is not why we have not gone to talk to him. We’ve tried.

The question is why he has not come to talk to us.

07/10/2026

Congratulations to the Chelmsford Police Department on their new command structure. Adding two Commander positions in place of a single Deputy Chief is a deliberate investment in span of control. CPD now operates with approximately 17 supervisors overseeing approximately 37 officers, roughly one supervisor for every 2.2 officers, and they never let a single supervisor stand alone.

CFD's ratio of 9 supervisors to 48 firefighters looks comparable on paper. It isn't. Five of those 9 (the Chief, Deputy Chief, and 3 administrative Captains) work Monday through Friday, 8am to 4pm only, about 24% of the week, and even then they aren't supervising line firefighters. They're administrative roles, available to respond if needed, not a second layer of command over the shift.

For the other 76% of the week, and functionally during weekday hours too, CFD runs on roughly 12 firefighters on duty at a time under a single Captain, spread across 5 stations and 7 frontline apparatus. That's a real span of control near 1 to 12, essentially unchanged all week, every week.

Here's what that means for you. Four of our substations have no on site supervision. Calls that don't draw a Captain have no on scene command. If that one Captain is tied up on an incident, the next call has none at all. Infrastructure and apparatus have no formal day to day oversight, no one assigned to manage it, no one to make decisions in the moment.

This isn't new. It predates the current Chief. However, in over a decade in the role, and after countless recommendations from the firefighters on the floor, he's done nothing to close it. During the Fire Station Study Committee he argued that improving span of control at these levels may not be necessary. Early in his tenure he eliminated a Deputy Chief position. The very position he was promoted from and replaced it with a Captain, flattening the structure further. The total opposite of what CPD's new Chief just did in his first weeks on the job.

We commend CPD's new Chief for recognizing what span of control means for the people under his command and the public he serves. We have continually asked our Chief to do the same. But after ten plus years of treating this as a non issue, we won’t hold our breath.

07/08/2026

We are not surprised anymore. Two residents die in a fire last fall. Silence. A firefighter is seriously hurt at the academy. Silence. Ninety four percent of this department says he is not fit to lead. Silence. The chief does not reach out. He does not visit a station. He does not address his people, not after tragedy, not after injury, not ever. This is not one missed moment. It is the standard.

That is not a complaint. It is a description of a pattern, and it has consequences that go beyond how this department feels about its Chief.

When the leader of an organization does not show up after serious incidents, that is a public safety problem, not a personnel problem. It affects morale. It also affects the Town directly. A documented pattern of nonresponse after serious incidents and a formal vote of no confidence are not outliers here. It is how things are handled. And when the hard topics get ignored instead of addressed, that record becomes legal exposure for the Town, not just reputational cost for one person.

We are not asking for inspirational speeches or strong advocacy. We know better than to expect that at this point. What we will not do is accept continued silence from our leader. But the absence of the head of the organization is noticed and felt.

He is the boss. There is a chain of command. Correct. But, EVEN GENERALS VISIT THEIR SOLDIERS.

For an organization to function at its full potential, the leader needs to stand in front of his people when things are hardest, not hide behind an open door policy. And it is not only that he has failed to do it when times are hardest. He has never done it, not once, not for anything. An open door means nothing if no one knows him well enough to feel comfortable walking through it.

If you think these posts are too much, we agree. We wish it were not this way. But we will not be ignored any longer. The day room is one floor below the chief’s office, and the apparatus bay is just down the hall from that. You know where to find us.

07/03/2026

This Fourth of July, this community will celebrate the founding of a nation built by people willing to fight for what is right. The members of this department believe in that same principle. It is why they are speaking up now.

Here is what residents do not see when they watch a fire truck roll by. Fire companies staffed with two firefighters. A single captain managing seven frontline apparatus and eleven to thirteen firefighters spread across five stations. A Chief who fills vacant captain shifts himself rather than addressing the systemic problem that has caused those vacancies for over a decade. And every time he does, command levels at active incidents are further reduced.

This is not about one shift or one bad day. The Command Climate Survey found that 89% of members say the Chief has not communicated a clear strategic direction for this department. That absence does not stay on paper. It shows up in how this department is staffed and deployed every single day.

Filling a shift is not a solution. It is a bandaid applied to a problem the Chief has known about for years. The members of this department are not asking for perfect. They are not even asking for exceptional. They are asking for better than what may be the worst staffing model in the state.

That is not an unreasonable ask. And right now, it is not only not being met, but is not even being advocated for.

06/29/2026

Seventeen times. That is how many times members of this department used the phrase “lack of” when describing their Chief in a formal survey.

Lack of leadership. Lack of supervision. Lack of support. Lack of communication.

Lack of support is not just words on a survey, it has real consequences. It looks like fire companies responding to your emergencies with two firefighters assigned. It looks like five stations and seven apparatus with no company officers, managed by a single captain stretched across all of them. These are not unpopular decisions. They are the absence of decisions. Gaps that exist because no one at the top demanded better.

This is not a personality conflict. This is not a contract dispute. This is a department telling you, in their own words, what is missing.

When those things are missing in a fire department, it is not just a management issue. It is a community issue.

The department is solid. The people in it make sure of that every single day. But they deserve better. And so do you.

06/24/2026

For those unable to attend first responder night, please consider donating to a great cause.

Funds raised will be donated to the families affected by the May 5th fire in Lowell where 6 homes were destroyed.

Chelmsford Firefighters were on scene that day and will continue to support our neighbors in need.

On May 5th, a wind-driven fire tore through four blocks of Lowell's Centra… Ben Croteau needs your support for Rebuilding Centralville: First Responders Night

06/23/2026

Come join us at the Lowell Spinners game June 28th as we honor and celebrate our first responders and heroes of the Greater Lowell area.

6/28/26 @ 5:00 PM - First Responders