By Gretchen Teske
Quad City Times
MOLINE, Iowa — The public safety team at the Quad Cities International Airport is celebrating a milestone with 50 years of service.
Chief Jeff Swan said the police and fire departments at the airport started on June 3, 1975, after guidance came from the Federal Aviation Administration, then known as the Civil Aviation Authority.
“We always had fire service at the airport, but they wanted more 24/7 protection,” he said.
From 1960-1975, the Coal Valley Fire Department was the main fire brigade for the airport, but was staffed on a volunteer basis. With federal orders demanding more service, a new solution had to be found.
“The city of Moline and Coal Valley put in bids to take over the action full time,” he said.
The airport ended up rejecting those bids and instead created the Safety Service Department in 1975.
Every member of the department is both a trained police officer and firefighter, Swan said. All members have gone through the respective academies and are trained in both jobs. Most of the job on the police side is security-motivated, but officers do have the right to exercise arresting powers.
In 1977, two years after the department formed, Paul Dick joined the team after leaving the Air Force following his service in the Vietnam War.
Dick stayed with the airport for 30 years and is somewhat of a historian when it comes to the history of the public safety department.
“It was very, very revolutionary at the time,” he said. “It won’t work very well for large municipalities, but for an airport it’s a lot more civil because police and fire can work together easily enough.”
Including himself, Swan said, there are 13 sworn officers on the job, four full-time dispatchers and four part-time dispatchers. Everyone works a fire schedule — 24 hours on and 48 hours off.
“In that schedule they work assignments where they might be on fire duty, or they might be on police duty,” he said.
But, it wasn’t so easy when the department was first established, Dick said.
“It was very, very difficult because we had no predecessors. Nobody to teach us how to combine police and fire, let alone in an airport environment,” he said. “Over the years there were a lot more blunders that we learned from experience than there were successes.”
Swan started in 2000, so now has been with the department for half its life. The biggest changes he has seen during his time, he said, are the advancements of technology.
“When I first started here, the trucks were from 1975 still,” he said. “You wouldn’t think a 25-year-old truck would be that out of date, but technology from the ‘70s to the early 2000s went crazy.”
Adding to that, Swan said the technology in the airport’s trucks from 2001 and 2003 are far behind the newest addition in 2021.
“We are way different from a structured fire department. We can sit in the firetruck and not get out, because everything is by our hands with joysticks,” he said. “We have turrets on top, so we just point and go.”
Swan said having a separate department helps keep the airport running smoothly, and is a benefit to both passengers and the community. Whether there’s an issue on the tarmac or in the parking lot, the public safety team is ready to respond, for the next 50 years and counting.
“We are here 24/7, seven days a week, 365 days a year. If an aircraft has an issue, we are here when they have an incident,” he said. “Really, it’s just customer service.”
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