Page 38 - InCommand Volume 36

OFCA Today
Chief Mitch Ross
Upper Arlington Fire Department, Retired
Mitch began his fire service career in 1975, after literally growing up in the fire station. His grandfather and grandmother lived in the Tri-Township Fire District fire station, where his grandfather was chief. It seemed inevitable that he would follow his grandfather and father, who were both chiefs of the department, into the “family business”. In 1975, he took his first steps into the fire service, joining the Tri-Township Fire District as a volunteer firefighter, eventually becoming training coordinator.
In 1978, he was hired as a career firefighter with the Delaware Fire Department, eventually leaving Delaware to join the Upper Arlington Fire Division in Franklin County. He rose through the ranks in Upper Arlington, being appointed to fire chief for the last 13 years of his career.
Mitch has been a member of the Delaware County Firefighters, and Franklin County and Central Ohio Fire Chiefs Associations. He is also a member of
the Ohio Fire Chiefs’ and the International Fire Chiefs Association. Mitch is a Fellow with the Ohio Fire and Emergency Services Foundation.
As the Ohio Fire Chiefs’ Association was developing the Fire Service Emergency Response System, Mitch was tapped as the first Region Four coordinator for the system. He was responsible for recruitment and training of the original 15 county coordinators and collection of resource data in the region. He also represented the OFCA’s Emergency Response System in the Ohio Emergency Operations center during several statewide incidents and exercises. He remained in this position until 2020.
Continuing his belief in the importance of sharing resources and organized responses, Mitch served for six years as a technical advisor for the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Intrastate Mutual Aid System. There, he assisted the states of Montana, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Nebraska in the development of statewide mutual aid systems, like the one he helped develop in Ohio. This included laying the groundwork for developing interstate mutual aid programs that would allow for local mutual aid resources to assist each other across state lines.
He was a member of the Ohio Fire Chiefs’ Association’s Collapse Rescue Committee, which would later be the State of Ohio Urban Search and Rescue Technical Advisory Committee. As part of this group, he instrumental in developing the original Structural Collapse Operations training program for the state of Ohio.
This led to the development of several regional collapse teams across Ohio. Mitch was the original coordinator for the Region Four collapse team. He was able to see it grow from an idea on paper into a fully deployable state asset. He served for 17 years in various positions with FEMA’s Ohio task Force One. He was deployed seven times with the Task Force, including on September 11, 2001, to the World Trade Center collapse.
As training coordinator for the Delaware County Firefighters Association, he was instrumental in the development of the Delaware Area Career Center firefighter training program, where he taught for several years in the adult educational program. He served on the original Advisory Board for the career
38 InCommand OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 • www.ohiofirechiefs.org