(Waverly)– A local fire chief has received some special recognition. Spirit Lake Fire Chief Pat Daly is the 2021 recipient of the Iowa Volunteer Fire Chiefs Association’s Roger Mooty Award. The award is given in recognition of advancing the fire service and for continued service as a fire chief. Daly says he was totally surprised when he was presented with the honor…
“Yeah I wasn’t expecting it. There’s a lot of other guys, other chiefs, that deserve it too, so it caught me off guard.”
Daly gives us some background into the award…
“Well it was a chief back years ago that concentrated on training his fire department with all the new technology and the Iowa fire chiefs give this award away, one of them away, every year. They’ve been doing this since way back in the ’50’s. They were going to stop doing it and then they decided that it was all part of history so they kept on doing it. So every year since then one of the guys pick out one of the chiefs that get into the training and stuff.”
Daly has been fire chief in Spirit Lake eight years now. He says he finds it very fulfilling…
“Well it’s just to keep it together and, you know, once you get on a department for a few years, you know, it’s just another family and you just want to make sure everybody’s safe and that’s where the training comes in.”
The award was presented to Daly during the 2021 Iowa Volunteer Fire Chiefs Association annual conference this past weekend in Waverly.
