By Mary Divine
Pioneer Press
LAKE ST. CROIX, Minn. — After nearly 50 years of fighting fires, Jim Stanley has a slew of fire-prevention tips to share.
Among them: Regularly clean your chimney, watch out for wind when burning brush and don’t store Tupperware in your oven.
Stanley, 68, of Lake St. Croix Beach, recently retired as chief of the Lower St. Croix Valley Fire Department, where he spent his entire career. He joined the department in 1978 and served in nearly all capacities in the department, including as deputy chief for 30 years. He was promoted to chief in 2017.
“It’s been a significant part of my life since I was 21,” Stanley said. “I’m grateful that my family has accepted this interruptive lifestyle as normal. I certainly couldn’t have done it without their love and understanding.”
Stanley, a trained EMT, has responded to almost every kind of call imaginable, including plane crashes, boat accidents, lightning strikes, ATV accidents, chimney fires and a hot-air-balloon fire.
Some of his most memorable calls have involved delivering babies and saving people after a cardiac arrest. “It used to be, if you saved one (from cardiac arrest) in 10 years, that was big, and now it’s no big deal to have a save. I mean, we have the expectation that you’re going to survive.
“There’s nothing better than when somebody you’ve saved from a cardiac arrest walks up and thanks you … because it didn’t look good for quite a while,” he said. “We had one guy that we saved twice.”
One of Stanley’s last calls “was a childbirth up at the scale,” he said, referring to the St. Croix Weigh Station on the north side of Interstate 94.
“They just pulled off the side of the road,” he said. “They were trying to make it into town. By the time the ambulance got there, I had the cord cut and had the baby all wrapped up. It was, ‘Here you go.’ It was a boy.”
The parents spoke only Spanish, so Stanley “had a translator on the line for a while, then I’m using my phone to translate,” he said. “I didn’t have clamps, so I used gauze to tie off the (umbilical) cord. I was going to cut it, and I thought, ‘Oh, wait a minute, Dad’s here.’ So I hand him the scissors, and he’s shaking his head ‘No’ and waving his hands, sort of like, ‘No way. You cut it.’”
One of the most heart-wrenching calls came on April 22, 2023 , he said. Two 10-year-old girls were killed in an ATV crash in Afton . “The saddest calls, obviously, are the ones involving kids,” he said. “That one was really bad.”
Two big tips: Fire extinguishers and suppression blankets
Cooking fires, especially grease on the stove, account for many of the most common fires these days, according to Stanley.
Dryer fires, also a common cause, can easily be prevented by regularly cleaning the lint filter after each use and cleaning the dryer vent system at least once a year. “From my viewpoint, it’s fire safety, but it’s also energy-efficient,” he said. “I mean, your clothes will dry a lot quicker.”
Fires caused by cigarette smoking aren’t nearly so common as they were 15 years ago, but the number of chimney fires seems to have increased, he said.
“People get creative with heating because of the cost of energy,” he said. “They start a fire in the fireplace, but they don’t clean their chimneys, so chimney fires are a large portion of our fires.”
Stanley said every house should have a fire extinguisher, and he says it should be stored near an exterior door. “You have got to get to the exit to get it, and then you go back to the fire,” he said. “You always have an exit lane that way.”
In addition to smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, Stanley recommends that every home have an emergency fire-suppression blanket, which he says actually works better than a fire extinguisher.
“When you use a blanket to put out a cooking fire, you’re protecting yourself from the fire, and then you’re putting it over the fire,” he said. “With a fire extinguisher, people are going to get too close and blow everything out all over. They make a lot of mess. They put out the fire, but if you have never used one before, you can create a lot of problems with it, too. You never want to blow it right into a pan that’s on fire because that will spread it — but that won’t happen with a blanket.”
Grass fires used to be more common, he said, when the railroad went through the Lower St. Croix River Valley’s five cities: Afton, Lakeland, Lake St. Croix Beach, Lakeland Shores and St. Mary’s Point. “That sparked a lot of fires,” he said.
Back to the Tupperware: “This woman had company coming over, and her kitchen was a mess,” he said. “So she took everything and put it in the oven. Well, one was a Tupperware bowl. Her son came home and preheated the oven. It was a mess.”
Stanley suffered two serious knee injuries when he responded to a brush fire in Afton on a windy day in 1998. “The gentleman’s wife said it was too windy to burn, so he burned, and it got out of hand, so we got involved,” he said. “I’m sure there was an ‘I told you so’ out of that.”
Stanley was helping guide fire trucks through an opening in a fence when one of the trucks dipped down in a ditch and came up suddenly, he said. “The next thing you know, I’m flying through the air,” he said. “Nobody knew what happened. It turns out there was barbed wire in the grass, and the tow hooks on the truck’s front bumper caught the barbed wire, and the barb wire caught me right across the knees and shot me like a rock out of a slingshot and bent everything the wrong way. That was the beginning of the end for my knees.”
Scholarship fund aids recruitment
The Lower St. Croix Valley Fire Department has 25 employees. Although many area departments have trouble with recruitment, the department has an excellent tool – the Robert W. Mason Scholarship Fund – for recruiting and retention, Stanley said.
The Mason Fund was established by a longtime Afton resident who died in October 1999. Robert Mason shocked the community by leaving an estate worth more than $2 million to the Lower St. Croix Valley Fire Department. His will established a charitable trust for scholarships for the department’s members, their spouses and children.
“It’s been incredibly generous,” Stanley said. “We’ve received, to date, about $1.2 million in scholarships that we’ve handed out.”
Both of Stanley’s children, Brent and Leah, benefited from the scholarships, he said.
A certain amount of the fund must be given away each year. If scholarship requests are not received, the surplus money is given to the department to buy unbudgeted items, Stanley said. “That (carbon-monoxide) exhaust system that was put in in January: That was 80 grand, and they paid for that,” he said.
Firefighters must live or work within 10 minutes from the station to work for the department. To qualify for the scholarships, the firefighter “must be a member in good standing,” Stanley said. “You have to make your minimum of 20 percent of all calls and 15 hours per quarter of training.”
Even with the scholarship fund, recruiting can be difficult, he said.
“Kids are busier nowadays. Parents are busier,” he said. “A lot of times it’s split families, and so their time is valuable. But, you know, when I joined, it was, ‘What can I do for you guys?’ And now it’s, ‘What can you guys do for me?’ It’s a different mindset.”
Grew up in St. Paul
Stanley grew up on St. Paul’s East Side. He jokes that his firefighting career started at an early age – fifth grade, in fact. That’s when he received an “Award of Merit” certificate and a captain’s badge for participating in the St. Paul Fire Department’s Junior Fire Department program.
He graduated from Johnson High School in 1975, went to a private school for dental technology and became a dental technician. He worked for Afton Dental Arts, owned by the late Afton Mayor Jerry Kellogg, for 20 years; Kellogg died in 2022.
“He was a friend of my parents, and so I got a job with him,” he said. “I joined the fire department because it was kind of a social club here. I was 21. Everybody, all the young guys, were on the team.”
It helped that his wife, Margi, comes from a St. Paul firefighting family, he said. “Two of her sisters were married to firefighters, and she has a nephew who is a chief officer with St. Paul (Deputy Chief Greg Duren ). Her other nephew is also on St. Paul. I think he’s a captain ( Aron Duren ). I mean, it’s in the family.”
Stanley said he gravitated to EMT/medical work almost immediately after joining the department. “The funny thing about that is in junior high, we were watching a Red Cross first-aid film, and it was all about mock injuries,” he said. “I almost passed out. But I’ve always liked emergency medical service, and so that’s what kept my interest because it kept changing.”
Stanley was an incredible first responder and incident commander, said Afton Mayor Bill Palmquist.
“We were lucky to have Jim serving our community for decades,” Palmquist said. “When Jim was made our full-time chief, he was often the first on the scene, and was able to analyze whatever emergency our neighbors were experiencing and then set the responding crews up in optimal ways to quickly provide help. I have seen firsthand the sense of relief when his duty vehicle arrived. Our residents knew they were in good hands.”
Dave Engstrom, city clerk/administrator for Lake St. Croix Beach, said it will be tough to lose the history that Stanley brought with him to the department.
“Our fire district is one of the best around, and Jim is one of the people to thank,” he said. “Jim grew up with the fire department, and the fire department grew up around Jim. He has been a truly outstanding and valuable member of the community.”
Rob Corey has been named interim chief of the department. Corey, a full-time firefighter at the Metropolitan Airports Commission, has been with the department for 19 years.
Jim Stanley open house
An open house honoring Lower St. Croix Valley Fire Chief Jim Stanley will be held from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. July 30 at the Lower St. Croix Valley Fire Department in Lake St. Croix Beach.
Stanley retired on July 1 after 47 years with the department.
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