Manchester Fire Chief Burkush heading to Hooksett, looks back at long city career

Jan. 28--MANCHESTER -- Fire Chief James Burkush's career has spanned four decades.

He's been a firefighter responding to a police captain shot in the back in the police station, and today, he leads his department through the city's heroin crisis, with firefighters reviving residents with Narcan.

Now, he's moving on. Burkush will retire from Manchester, where he has served as fire chief/emergency management director, but he is not giving up firefighting.

As of May 1, Burkush will become Hooksett's new fire chief.

"I am very pleased to have someone with the experience and knowledge of Chief Burkush coming to Hooksett," said Dr. Dean E. Shankle Jr., Hooksett's town administrator. "We have been moving forward on many fronts over the last few years and I expect him to help us significantly in his primary areas of expertise: administration of fire/rescue services and emergency management."

He has been with the city fire department since 1977, moving up in the ranks to become its chief in February 2008.

Burkush said he will take his pension, which according to Martin Karlon, public information officer for the New Hampshire Retirement System, will be about 97.5 percent of his current salary, or about $140,000 annually.

Burkush expects the mayor will select a new fire chief in April.

His employment contract with Hooksett is for three years and calls for him to work 30 hours for about $99,000 annually. He will not receive insurance or retirement benefits.

"Although this is a somewhat unusual arrangement, the fact is that if we hired a full-time chief the cost including benefits would be over $150,000," said Shankle

"We are getting a highly respected and experienced chief for three quarters of the normal time for about three quarters of what we would need to pay someone else. I think this is a very good deal for the town. He has assured me he feels very comfortable he will be able to provide outstanding service to the town under this arrangement, or he wouldn't be taking the job."

According to a news release issued by the town, Burkush said he was "looking forward to working with the firefighters and residents of Hooksett as they face the challenges associated with rapid growth, commercial expansion and efficient delivery of services."

Burkush became a firefighter in 1977, following in the footsteps of his father. His brother, John, joined the department the same year, and is captain at Station 4 at Hackett Hill.

Over the years, Burkush said, the department has transformed to one where firefighters are trained to perform highly skilled rescues, respond to terrorist and hazardous material incidents and, most recently, are on the front lines of the heroin epidemic, administering life-saving Narcan to overdose victims.

In the past, he said, overdoses were a rarity in the city, but today firefighters can respond to one or more daily.

"They are especially trying," Burkush said. At one call, he said, firefighters found a father dead in one room, the mother high on drugs and two little kids in the apartment.

Over his career, Burkush has responded to hundreds of fires and rescues. The hardest have been when someone has died, particularly children, he said.

One of his first calls, he said, was when police Capt. Evangelos Xiggoros was shot in the back in the police station on Dec. 31, 1977.

A woman filing a complaint also was wounded when three shots were fired from a third-floor Manchester Street apartment by Thomas H. Theodosopoulos, then 22, using a .350 caliber Magnum rifle.

Burkush said police immediately turned out all the lights, not knowing where the shots came from or if there were more to come. He said he and another firefighter made their way inside the police station to reach Xiggoros and take him out.

One of the most emotional calls Burkush was involved in was the rescue of Ada Geigel in 1996. The Manchester mother of two, then 28 years old, had fallen from the Bridge Street Bridge into the Merrimack River.

Burkush was a member of Rescue 1, which saved the woman.

Later, firefighters learned Geigel had killed her 6-year-old son, Xayomar, stabbing him in the stomach with a sword because, she told Catholic Medical Center nurses, he was born evil.

She, too, was suffering from a stab wound to the stomach. Geigel later was found incompetent to stand trial.

There have been other tough times, like the death of Firefighter David Anderson in 1999, Burkush said. Anderson suffered a heart attack at a fire.

Then there was Sept. 11, 2001, the chief recalled.

For about three months, he said, a car with six Manchester firefighters made the trip to New York or Connecticut for funerals of first responders killed in the New York City terrorist attack.

However, he said it is the everyday things he will take with him, like the firefighter who bought a winter coat for an Army veteran who roams the city's streets picking up trash.

And the way firefighters adopted 16 needy families at Christmas, delivering gifts the kids requested by fire truck.

"There's so many things firefighters do every day that go unrecognized," he said. No one knows about it, he said, because the firefighters don't want anyone to know.

"The compassion these men have for their fellow man is unbelievable," he said.

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