HANSON – What’s in store for the Hanson Fire Department now that there’s a new chief in the corner office?
More of the same, if you ask Chief Robert O’Brien – who sees himself as something of a conduit between the department’s past and its future. A 27-year fire service veteran, O’Brien took command officially in June, after some five years as a deputy chief and several weeks as acting chief after the retirement of Chief Jerome Thompson Jr.
“Chief Thompson was always very encouraging,” he said of new ideas he had suggested as he climbed the ranks. “Some of them work, some don’t work, and that’s where encouraging people is valuable.”
It is an approach he is continuing as chief of a department that Thompson had already brought a long way from where it was 16 years ago.
“We’ve got a lot of stuff going on, which is good,” he said. “We have a very young department. Their enthusiasm, their way of thinking, is – I’m going to call it non-traditional.
“That’s what I’m really pushing for the direction of the department now, for the firefighters and the officers to think outside the box … basically throw it against the wall, and if it sticks, great, If it doesn’t, then we continue the way we’ve been going.”
There have already been a lot of ideas they are trying, including use of the experience new hires have until they can go to fire academy. One has fire experience and has been put on shift, another has paramedic experience but not firefighting training, so he is assigned to the first ambulance out the door, which leaves three firefighters and a lieutant available to answer fire calls until he can attend the academy.
“Firewise, we don’t want to put him in a precarious position without being trained,” O’Brien said. It also allows the second ambulance to get out the door faster.
“My mantra to them is, ‘Let’s give it a try,’” he said. “Having a young department, the experience level is different from what I have.”
While maintaining a lot of the department’s traditions and respect for its history, O’Brien said technology is making a lot of changes as it adheres to the department’s tradition of aggressively seeking grant funding for equipment, projects and programs. Emergency management has provided a weather TV system – which, no doubt, came in handy during Saturday’s tornado warnings – and ROCC 911 funding pays for the department’s security and dispatch systems. Those are just two areas where grant funding has been secured for the department.
A lot of information on what to do to prepare for weather extremes, and what resources in town are available, for example, are posted to residents via social media on the department’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.
“We’re really fortunate here that Rob Heffernan is a big technology guru,” he said. “All these TVs and monitors that you see, especially the big one [in the main room which is used for virtual classes and webinars], the townspeople didn’t pay for any of it.”
As he spoke, one of those video screens, which displays a map most of the time, alarms went off as Whitman Fire was dealing with a heat emergency involving a person collapsed on South Avenue. A line of white LED lights was illuminated along the ceiling as well as a shorter line of red LED lights. Had it been at night the red lights would be more prominent at first, so it would be less jarring to the 24/7 crews being awakened by alarms until firefighters’ eyes adjust to the light.
“That’s why I’m encouraging people to come on in,” he said. “Come see your fire station. You paid for it, but what’s interesting is what they don’t have to pay for.”
While most technology equipment is funded by grant money, a majority of that in the apparatus bay is a combination of grant money and the ambulance account. The ladder truck replacement, for example, is being looked at as a 50-percent grant-sourced project.
“I’ve been very fortunate my whole career,” he said. “Other chiefs outside [of town], because of my involvement with technical rescue … I’ve gotten very involved with MEMA.”
It’s been a boon to networking, he said.
Hanson Fire and Mass. Maritime Academy plan to run a big tabletop exercise in April, that the school’s seniors are working.
“It’s going to be a little different for the town,” O’Brien said. “Chief Thompson allowed me to handle all the emergency management stuff, but I’m starting to go through things now of a continuity of operations plan for the town.”
Hanson does not currently have a robust emergency operation plan. A comprehensive plan was developed just about the time Thompson retired.
O’Brien has also presented a training course at Mass. Maritime for the helicopter aquatic rescue team, for which he is a program coordinator. The team specializes in flood and swift water rescues, from a concept developed in North Carolina.
“We’ve been working on it for five years and now it’s up and running,” he said.
O’Brien is also pushing for firefighters to be better educated in their craft and learning from what other departments have done or what they’ve experienced outside of Hanson Fire, to be more valuable members of the department.
Shifts are excited about new training techniques they can learn as a unit, as well.
“Firefighting is changing constantly and what it was 30 or 40 years ago is much different than what it is today,” he said, adding that department leadership is also sitting down with firefighters to discuss their short-term and long-term career goals.
While ambulance receipts also fund equipment like the new amulance being sought at the October Town Meeting, O’Brien said most ambulance costs to patients are handled through insurance.
“We don’t go to collections for it,” he said. “We don’t want people not to call the ambulance because of the cost.”
He also stressed the importance of calling 911 when help is needed, instead of the business line, because there might not be someone available to answer the business line if they are out on a call, prevention or training.
In fact, if O’Brien had an unlimited budget, staffing would be his top priority.
“Right now, we are looking at a SAFER grant,” he said. “It will pay 100-percent [of costs involved with] firefighter hiring – physicals, equipment, training, health care and retirement for three years, which is a great deal … But at the end of three years, the municipalities take ownership of that.”
He’s working with the Select Board and Finance Committee to determine how the department can afford that level of staffing.
More people on ambulances get them out the door quicker and more people on the fire line are important because fires burn hotter and faster than they used to because of chemicals used in buildings.
The May 2022 Town Meeting also approved funds for a feasibility study for the station, which should be going out to bid shortly, but O’Brien is aware a new Highway facility is a more pressing priority in town right now, and rightfully so, but the fire station is approaching 50 years old – and originally shared space with the library and senior center.
“The building was not designed for 24-hour occupancy,” he said. “Our bunkrooms are make-shift and are in the attic.”
It was also not designed for a co-ed fire crew, and the department now has two female firefighters.
“We’re the best-looking building in town, and a lot of that is due to the [maintenance and upkeep] done by the firefighters,” O’Brien said, noting he does not see any reason to move the Fire Department to a different location – which leaves a decision on how to improve the building where it is.
“We’re doing the groundwork,” he said.

How do you get to know a new town?
If you are Beth Sobiloff and Marcia Rothwell, you post your intention to visit on Facebook, and ask for suggestions as to where to eat and what to do when you arrive. That’s how the two of them ended up starting the day with a veggie omelet and French toast at Cowbells Café on Thursday, July
Sobiloff and Rothwell, known for their Facebook mission to visit every town in Massachusetts, record their adventures on a webcast travelogue called Two Grannies on the Road.
Something of a modern-day, high-tech combination of the late Scripps-Howard newspaper columnist Ernie Pyle’s Depression-era travels across America to introduce his countrymen to each other, revived on television by CBS’ Charles Kuralt in the 1970s. The Massachusetts mission is the latest Sobiloff has undertaken, with Rothwell as her third partner.
Whitman is the 56th Bay State community the vlog has visited and as they rattled of some of those towns, this writer couldn’t help but replay the vintage country tune, “I’ve Been Everywhere” in the back of my mind.
“We’ve been all over the state,” Sobiloff said as she began listing some of the towns. “Marion, Mattapoisett, Fairhaven, Dartmouth, New Bedford and then we’ve done a couple places on the Cape … we’ve been up in Newburyport, Newbury and West Newbury … we’ve also been out to North Adams and Adams and Williamstown and a five-day trip to the Berkshires.”
Quite a few towns in the greater Worcester area have also been destinations.
After breakfast, they had plans to head over to the Historical Society to chat about Whitman’s history and how they might add historical site drive-bys to the itinerary. They had an appointment to interview Josh Phippen, of the South Shore Boxing Gym on South Avenue and were going to fit in lunch at another Whitman eatery before stopping for an ice cream at Peaceful Meadows on the way out of town.
“We end our day with ice cream.” Sobiloff said.
They took photos of their breakfast entrees and video recorded their reactions to the menu items for their Facebook page before eating.
“I’ve got French toast made with French bread, which you don’t see all the time,” Sobiloff reported. “I’ve got real maple syrup, which is a must for me… Very good. I like the French toast, nice and thick..”
From the Plymouth area, Sobiloff said her son lives in Hanson and her daughter works in Whitman, so she is a bit familiar with it, but as always they let the community give suggestions for their specific destinations.
“We try to do something unusual,” Rothwell said, mentioning the boxing gym visit. “I hate boxing,” she laughed. She told gym owner Phippen the same thing in an often-funny interview posted the Grannies Facebook page: facebook.com/twogranniesontheroad.
That visit also included the ladies climbing into the ring to test their fighting stance as well as a round or two with the speedbag and heavy bag.
“We often will do drive-arounds to view historic buildings that aren’t necessarily open, monuments, parks, things of that nature,” Sobiloff said.
“This town seems to have a lot of things,” Rothwell said.
This writer interviewed them – and they interviewed me – it was a mutual meeting of the media mavens of the South Shore.
A native of Wethersfield, Conn., Rothwell is a retired nurse who worked at Hartford Hospital for 46 years, but Sobiloff, an Ohio native, still works as a web designer. Each of the women is a bona fide grandmother – with six grandchildren each. They also love to joke around that Rothwell is the third “second granny.”
“I actually started [her travels] in 2010,” Sobiloff said. “I’d had my business for about eight years and I was single at the time, my youngest son was getting ready to graduate from college … and I just started thinking about how I hadn’t had a vacation in eight years.”
Taking her kids cross county in an RV had always been a dream of hers, but she never had the chance to do it. Then she realized she had a job she could do anywhere.
“I thought maybe I could figure out a way to travel and work across the country,” she said. Not wanting to travel alone, Sobiloff asked friend Ginny Just, who, as a graphic designer, was also not tied to an office.
“That made me think of the name: ‘Two Grannies on the Road,’” she said. “I got together with her and told her my idea and she said, ‘I’m in.’”
Sobiloff’s first partner in travel vlogging created the logo and Sobiloff created the website: twogranniesontheroad.com.
“The deal was to get sponsorships from big companies like Winnebago,” she said. “We did some networking about it, we did some proposals to big companies for sponsorships, but we were coming out of absolutely nowhere – nobody knew who we were.”
RV life may be more of a thing now, but 12 years ago it was a strange notion to some of the recreational vehicle companies.
“We just evolved over the years,” Sobiloff said. The next idea was to interview Baby Boomers being forced out of jobs at a time of economic downturn and what they were doing to reinvent themselves, to inspire other Baby Boomers to go for their dreams.
She made that cable access program in East Bridgewater for a couple of years, before Sobiloff and her then-partner each met a new husband and boyfriend, respectively.
Sobiloff and her husband moved to Plymouth and her first partner retired.
“I had guest grannies a lot of times,” she said.
“She tells me these stories,” Rothwell laughed. “I’m worried about her freezer.”
Guest Grannie Debbie Phalen, a retired optician who had started candy business in her basement, agreed to come on board for the mission to visit every city and town in Massachusetts after she and Sobiloff had worked together on a few shows. Phalen moved to Florida to be near her daughter about a year ago.
Enter Rothwell, who met at a social luncheon when a mutual acquaintance introduced them.
“Here I am,” Rothwell said.
Once Rothwell writes down the responses to her Facebook inquiries about a town, she makes some calls to confirm schedules and it’s time to hit the road. She also calls each town’s historical society for an after-breakfast trip.
“Maybe there are sights that we need to see,” she said. “This town, it was interesting how much different things, historically have taken place. … It’s always exciting what we find.”
Then there’s the editing to do before an episode goes up on their web site.
Next week the Two Grannies follow their road back to Western Massachusetts to Shelburne and Buckland. Follow along on Facebook.
They also speak at senior centers. Libraries and over-55 communities on their travels. Contact them at [email protected], their websites and Facebook page.