Valley fire marshal steps down after 33 years

Kevin Miller had no intention of becoming a firefighter. His plans were to go to college and become a math teacher and baseball coach.

It didn’t exactly happen that way.

After graduating from Central Valley High School he worked in a local lumber yard to save up money for college. A buddy convinced him to take the test to be a firefighter in Spokane. Two weeks later, he took the test to be a Spokane Valley Fire Department firefighter and was soon hired on. He never looked back.

Miller, who has been the fire marshal since 2005, retired last week after 33 years with the department.

“My very first fire was next door at the Pinecroft Mobile Home Park,” Miller, 55, said Dec. 31 at his retirement party in the department’s administration building. “Last night there was another fire in Pinecroft. How weird is that?”

When Miller became a firefighter that’s all the department had. In the 1980s firefighters began getting training to become paramedics and Miller was one of them.

“We were like rock stars, two guys in a truck running all over the Valley,” he said. “It was busy. It was great.”

In the early ’90s he moved into the prevention side of the department and became an inspector. “When you’re a paramedic walking through the front door, everybody is happy to see you,” he said. “When you’re an inspector walking through the door with a clipboard, not so much.”

He later attended the police academy to become a fire investigator and would investigate 693 fires during his career. Figuring out how fires start can be a challenge.

“It’s a big puzzle,” he said. “Just the hunt is a lot of fun as a fire investigator.”

Miller was the deputy fire marshal for a few years before he took over leadership of the prevention division in 2005. His staff is responsible for fire education, inspection and investigation.

Technology has been the biggest change over the decades, Miller said. Firefighters used to go into fires blind, peering through smoke to determine the layout of a building. Now they can look up commercial buildings on their computers to find out the building materials, the floor plan and what is stored inside.

“We didn’t have computers,” Miller said. “We hand wrote all the reports. Today we’ve got computers in the fire trucks that take you right to the fire.”

Now that Miller is gone, his deputy, Clifton Mehaffey, will step in as fire marshal on an interim basis until a search is made for Miller’s replacement.

Having a good second-in-command played a role in his decision to retire, Miller said. “There’s lot of young guys coming up,” said Miller. “It’s just time to do something different.”

While Miller has a home remodel and a long list of “honey-do’s” to look forward to, he will miss the camaraderie that comes with the job.

“You have your family and the department family,” he said. “I have 183 relatives on this job.”