Josh Woods, the new Mayflower Volunteer Fire Department chief, has been a firefighter half his life.
Woods, 36, grew up in Centerton in Northwest Arkansas, and his father was a volunteer firefighter.
“When I got old enough, I joined up there,” he said. He was 18. After he graduated from Gravette High School, he earned an associate degree in fire science at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville.
Having grown up around a fire station, he said there wasn’t any doubt what he would do.
Woods moved to Russellville to attend Arkansas Tech University in 2001 and received a bachelor’s degree in emergency management in 2003. While he was a student, he was hired in 2002 by the Sylvan Hills Fire Department, now the Sherwood Fire Department. He continued to work there after he was hired in 2004 by the Maumelle Fire Department, where he worked until 2012. He became a captain at the Sherwood Department, and he was still in that department when he landed the Mayflower position.
While he was at Arkansas Tech, he took an Arkansas Forestry Commission class that piqued his interest — and he passed a test to become a wildland firefighter. He was on an Arkansas crew, which worked primarily during the summers.
“I did wildland firefighting, so tens of thousands of acres — on the East Coast and
West Coast,” Woods said. “My first time I got deployed with them, I had my first helicopter and airplane ride in the same day,” he said, laughing. “It was interesting. We left from Fort Smith and went to West Virginia and then went to Oregon and North[ern] California. I guess I wasn’t smart enough to be scared,” he said.
In Oregon he fought what was called the Biscuit Fire, which burned nearly 500,000 acres.
“We normally were gone 21 days at a time, then you’d have to come home and rest for so many days. You got sent out in the morning, and you didn’t come back to the camp or whatever until 14 to 16 hours later. I was a lot younger then,” he said.
He started volunteering about a year ago with the Mayflower Volunteer Fire Department, a city he made his home about 10 years ago. He and his wife, Dena, have a son, Keeton, 8, and a daughter, Kenzie, 2, and Woods coaches his son’s baseball team.
Woods was hired May 20 as the fire chief to replace Carl Rossini, who resigned. Rossini was cleared in a sexual-assault investigation after the prosecuting attorney said there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant filing criminal charges.
David Batt served as the interim chief during the hiring process.
Maumelle Fire Chief Gerald Ezell was a member of the hiring committee for Woods.
“The thing that most impressed me about Chief Woods was a very clear dedication toward the city of Mayflower and its residents. He will most definitely go above and beyond to assure the safety and well-being of each citizen he serves as their fire chief,” Ezell said.
“I don’t know that becoming a chief was always my goal,” Woods said, but he had the training and education that qualified him for the job. “My biggest thing is just to do the best for the Mayflower community, because this is my home now.”
Woods is also an emergency medical technician, president of the Arkansas Emergency Medical Services board, and a member of the board for the Arkansas EMS Association and a planning committee for the association. He is also on the state critical-incident stress-management team. He participates in debriefings after incidents or deaths that can cause “abnormal stress issues,” he said.
He said he wants to see more training for the department, which includes 14 volunteer firefighters.
“We want to get as much training as we can because the more training we have, the more we can help the community. One thing is, I want somebody to say ‘Mayflower Fire Department’ and everybody to know that’s a great fire department — that we get the job done and know what we’re doing.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.