Williamstown Fire Chief Craig Pedercini has a timer on his phone counting down the days until the day he will retire from his role. With just under a month left, he’s said that even after 23 years in the job, he wishes he could stick around to oversee the construction of the new fire station on Main Street, which is expected to open in December 2025.
Last summer, Pedercini requested to extend his time as chief past the state-mandated retirement age of 65 for fire department employees, but the Town Prudential Committee found too many hurdles in getting state approval to delay Pedercini’s retirement, he said.
While the end of this month will mark his official retirement, Pedercini plans to remain in close touch with the department informally until the new fire station is finished, and to offer help to the next fire chief.
“[The new fire station] is probably one of the biggest accomplishments we have going for us,” Pedercini said. “I’m looking for a permanent pass to the fire station if I want to go have coffee — I think I’ve earned that.”
Pedercini joined the department as a volunteer firefighter in 1988 while working as a carpenter for the College’s Facilities department. In the carpentry shop, Pedercini worked on building repairs and took on construction projects for professors. Alongside the normal fare of bookshelves, he also took on odd-jobs specific to the professors’ research, including aquariums, a mouse maze, and a set of cabinets to house finches.
“We built a lot of stuff,” he said. “I remember telling people, ‘Look, if we can’t build it, you don’t need it.’”
Pedercini left his job at the College to become the Town’s second full-time fire chief in 2002.
He remembered Jan. 17, 2003 as a momentous day in his tenure as chief: In the same day, he responded to his first fire at the Williamstown Motel on Main Street and celebrated the retirement of former Chief Edward M. McGowan.
Pedercini said he most vividly remembers two Spring Street fires that permanently damaged businesses and apartments. In 1998, as Pedercini remembers, a fire damaged the buildings that housed Blue Mango and Spice Root, and in 2007 another fire took out an entire block on Spring Street, including a building that at the time housed the Purple Pub. The section of the street that burned down, between Amy’s Cottage and TD Bank, remains empty today.
“We put the fire out, but it was a nasty fire, and it burned a lot,” he said.
Pedercini has been advocating for the construction of a new fire station since 2006, The 75-year-old building on Water Street barely fits all the department’s trucks, some of which are parked so close together that only one truck’s door can open at a time. It falls short of multiple safety standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Fire Protection Association.
Gathering community support and finding a suitable location for the new fire department delayed the project, but now, with construction underway, Pedercini said he anticipates that the new station will be finished by December.
During his time as chief, Pedercini also oversaw growth in the number and diversity of students at the College who volunteer as firefighters. In 2002, there were only two student firefighters. Today, the department has 10 student volunteers. Eight past volunteers have been women, Pedercini said, up from just one when he became chief.
Pedercini said he is proud of the quality of his department’s mentorship to student firefighters, some of whom, he said, have continued to work in the fire service. “We try to keep it a close family,” Pedercini said. “I always tell people that when they come on the department, you are brothers and sisters in the fire service.”
One member of the fire department family, Erryn Leinbaugh ’99, served as a volunteer firefighter as a student. When he moved back to Berkshire County 15 years later to work as a doctor of emergency medicine at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, he asked Pedercini if he could have his old job back. “He just showed up on my doorstep one day,” Pedercini said. “He’s been back for over 10 years.”
The students who have learned the ropes of fire fighting under Pedercini’s supervision appreciate the mentorship they’ve received from the fire department.
“Chief Pedercini is universally respected in the department for his knowledge and leadership,” volunteer firefighter Nicky Wahab ’27 said.
Last semester, Pedercini challenged the students with six practical firefighting classes that culminated in a live burn exercise, in which they practiced putting out a real, controlled fire. “Chief Pedercini pushes us but is very fair,” Wahab said.
The students, like all the department’s volunteer firefighters, get paid hourly for responding to calls, but not enough to justify the trouble the volunteers go to, Pedercini said. “If you’re in it for the money, you’re in it for the wrong reason,” he said. “Twenty bucks an hour is not a lot of money. You get up out of bed at two in the morning and come down here — you’ve got to want to do it.”
The elected Prudential Committee, which is responsible for the operation and fiscal oversight of the district, will publicly interview the three finalists to succeed Pedercini as fire chief today: Jeffrey J. Dias, deputy fire chief at the fire department in Onset, Mass.; Williamstown Fire Department Lieutenant Ryan Housman; and Robert Parsons, chief of the fire department in Spencer, Mass.
Pedercini said that he anticipates that the Prudential Committee will announce the new chief a week after the interviews.
“I might be retired, but I’m still going to stick around here,” Pedercini said. “I won’t try to bug the chief too much, whoever they end up hiring — but I’m here to help him.”
