SLO LIFE Magazine Aug/Sep 2019

| Q&A
FIRE CHIEF
Not quite six months into his new job as the San Luis Obispo Fire Chief,
KEITH AGGSON dropped by the office for a conversation that ranged
from emergency preparedness to how he met his wife. Here is some of
what he had to say…
Tell us, Keith, where are you from? I grew up
here. We lived on nine acres in the Atascadero
area. Back then, you were playing a sport, or
you were out in the creek fishing, or you were
hunting with BB guns. I was super fortunate to
grow up in that environment. My parents are
just hardworking; a blue-collar family. I’m the
first in my family to get my bachelor’s degree
and do something different. They have always
been in the trades. My father did framing and
concrete. I did a lot of construction growing
up. It’s backbreaking work. We had a neighbor
who was a firefighter and he encouraged me to
check it out. So, while I was still in high school,
I was able to take some basic fire classes at Allan
Hancock and, as soon as I graduated, I was able
to start working in CAL Fire’s seasonal program.
And, what was your first “real job?” I became
a reserve firefighter in Atascadero, and went
to the fire academy and paramedic school, and
became full-time there at the age of 20. I got a
ton of great experience, lots of emergency calls.
One of the funniest was a call we received for a
goat stuck in a tree. We normally don’t retrieve
animals from trees, but we said, “Okay, we’ll
go have a look.” I’m not kidding, this goat was
legitimately 45 feet up in that oak tree. I’ve never
seen anything like it. So, we sprayed some water
at him with the hose and got him mad enough
where he started to climb back down on his own.
But, I’ve been called out to some really massive
fires. And the interesting thing is we keep being
told, “This is the biggest fire you’re ever going
to see in your entire career—you’ll never see
anything like this again.” Sure, enough, they
keep getting bigger.
Why is that? What’s happening? It’s the
climate; it’s the drought; and over the last
125 years we’ve been putting fires out and not
allowing them to burn through to clean the
forest out like Mother Nature intended. So that’s
why I think we’re seeing more of these highenergy,
rapid-burning, rapid-propagation type
of fires. At the same time, people are building
farther out into the interface areas. And, I know
that people say it can’t happen here, but that
is what they said in Santa Rosa, too. I have
a close friend who lives there; he’s a division
chief, and says, “If someone would have told
me my house would burn down from a wildfire,
I would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’” A couple of
years ago, he lost his home, and so did his
in-laws, in the Tubbs Fire, which, at the
time, was the state’s worst fire. We have
some commonalities here in San Luis
Obispo and an interface fire, which is
what happened up there, and with homes
that are built closely together and with, at
times, strong winds and dry conditions, it’s
something we need to think about.
What can be done to lessen the odds?
Believe it or not, it’s usually the landscaping
around homes that is the issue. Having an
appropriate amount of landscaping and keeping
it trimmed back and away from your home is
the number one thing you can do. Beyond that,
everyone should have a 72-hour kit with enough
food and water for three days. You should have
a plan for how to evacuate quickly, and a plan
for where to go. My wife and I keep a bag that is
ready to go at all times with a little bit of cash, a
couple credit cards, and some food and water—
and also, something most people forget about,
which is copies of all your identification. This
is especially critical for a small business. Many
of them never fully bounce back from a disaster
because they lose so many of their valuable
documents and so much important data that
may not have been stored in the cloud.
You mentioned your wife. Tell us how you met.
It was about ten years ago; we were both single.
We were all at a restaurant eating dinner after a
fire. I saw her walk in—she was with someone
who I recognized from my gym—and I thought,
“Man, I sure would like to meet that girl, find
out who she is.” So, I’m trying my best to not be
a creepy stalker as I asked around at the gym,
“Hey, who was that?” A day or two later, I get an
email through Facebook. It was from someone
I didn’t know who was trying to track down
my younger brother for his class reunion. We
emailed back and forth, and this goes on for
something like five or six weeks. Finally, it dawns
on me, and I ask her, “Were you that girl that
walked into the restaurant a couple of months
ago?” And, she said, “Yep, that’s me!” [laughter]
Turns out that she had gone to high school with
my brother. I said, “Hey, you’ve got to let me take
you to dinner.” We’ve been together ever since.
She’s a super supportive, amazing person.
SLO LIFE
30 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | AUG/SEP 2019