LVFD officers elected: Blain moves up to chief, Leithead new captain

A pair of recent retirements have resulted in a mostly new leadership team for the Lovell Volunteer Fire Department.

The chief, assistant chief and captain trio of officers had been in place since the retirement of Chief Jim Minchow in 2019 with Mike Jameson serving as chief, Bob Mangus as assistant chief and Lynn Hitz captain.

Mangus chose to not seek re-election as assistant chief one year ago and later retired as station manager, though he remains a fireman in the department. With Mangus stepping away, Hitz moved up to assistant chief a year ago with Zach Blain stepping in as captain.

The dominoes continued to fall when, due to health reasons, Jameson retired in October from the department and stepped down as chief.

An election was held this fall, and Hitz didn’t seek the office of chief, choosing to remain as assistant chief. But Blain did put in and was elected chief, while Kyle Leithead was elected captain.

Though a member of the LVFD for just five years, joining in 2020, Blain has many years of firefighting experience with the U.S. Forest Service, having worked for the Forest Service for 15 years before moving into the private sector as the co-owner/operator of Minchow’s Service with brother-in-law Jared Minchow.

“When I was with the Forest Service, I wasn’t primary fire (fighting),” Blain said. “I had other duties for primary duties, but I did a lot of firefighting and helped them any chance I got. So I got a lot of training and experience through the Forest Service that way. I was over here (Bighorn National Forest) for five years and then over there (Shoshone NF) for another 10. So yeah, I had lots of wildland fire experience that way.”

With his experience and a willingness to serve, Blain offered to run for chief and was elected by his fellow firemen.

“I just felt like my past experience kind of led to being able to help out as chief for a while and keep things moving, at least,” Blain said. “And as far as community service goes, I like being able to help the community and hopefully help the department improve and keep doing what we’ve always done: provide a good service.”

It helps having brother-in-law Jared, also a fireman, side by side with him at the station so that one can stay at a station task or head to a fire, depending on the situation.

“Sometimes it’s hard because we both need to go, but it’s also nice because he understands what we’re doing,” Blain said. “Sometimes I need to go, and he picks up all the pieces that are left here lying. It’s good to have that understanding and help on both sides, for sure.”

Blain said he will fill the rest of Jameson’s term, which expires in November, after which Blain or someone else will be elected chief for a three-year term.

Other officers

Hitz joined the fire department in 2002 and served as training officer for several years, Blain said. Leithead joined in 2017.

“Lynn has been on the department for a long time and just has a lot of local knowledge on how things have been done and what we’ve done,” Blain said. “And then Kyle brought in a lot of experience from other departments that he’d been on, and he was kind of a part-time guy on a full-time department in St. George when he was down there. So he’s got more structure fire and wreck experience that he brings to us that helps out with different ways to do things and organize stuff.

“So between the three of us, I think we have a pretty well-rounded background to proceed, but we still lean pretty heavy on the guys that have been there a long time like Bob (Mangus) and Doug Savage, some of those guys that are sticking around because they have so much experience, plus all the ones that are retired already that we’re always asking how to do stuff.”

Besides Jameson, recent retirements are Jeff Angell, Chris Sawaya and Neil Mayes.

“We lost about 122 years of experience in those four individuals,” Blain noted.

The new chief doesn’t have any major plans for the year ahead except to do what the department has been doing for years but even better.

“We’re trying to just keep things moving and maybe try a few new things as far as how we operate and bring the department together a little bit more and be more structured using some of the different ideas from outside that we’ve seen in the past,” he said. “I have a lot of training and experience on the structure of firefighting, how to set up departments and stuff. So I’d like to use some of that, if it’ll help us, in how we operate and doing after-action reviews and types of training and how much we train. It’s trying to get us up and moving, keep us going so we’re not complacent, staying at one level. We want to keep improving. There’s always new training and new information out there and stuff to learn and do.

“It seems like we’ve backed off (training) over the last few years, and I think we need to start ramping it up so we can maintain our qualifications and abilities. We’ve got a lot of new guys on, so we’ve got to get them trained.”