After 40 years in firefighting, Langford Fire Chief Bob Beckett has seen the aftermath of some of the world’s biggest disasters.
He helped Los Angeles firefighters put out fires during the Rodney King riots.
He saw children targeted by snipers during the Bosnian war.
He stood at Ground Zero of the World Trade Center in New York City, a week after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
He went to Afghanistan during the war, forging a lasting bond with firefighters in Kabul.
And he helped with the disaster relief efforts in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
As Beckett retired after 21 years as Langford’s fire chief on Friday, it was clear he saw his role as an ambassador, connecting people from around the world to this West Shore community of 35,000.
Beckett, 63, started his career 40 years ago with the Waterloo Fire Department.
Early in his career, Beckett took an interest in travelling to fire departments in other countries to learn and share information.
Beckett was in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992, when the officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted, sparking six days of riots across the city. Beckett spent 48 hours going call to call with a Los Angeles fire crew, but what he took away from the experience lasted much longer.
He said seeing the prejudice and the socio-economic disparities that led to the riots “started me on a journey to recognize that the fire service is part of the much bigger family and has global community connections.”
Beckett saw a call-out for volunteer firefighters in Bosnia, where fighting between Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats eventually led to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
“I went from the riots in L.A. to this horrific conflict, with no bounds of righteousness. You’ve got people sniping at children, specifically targeting children, in the streets of Sarajevo. There’s this conflict that pits what were once friends and neighbours against each other.”
Another tragedy that is still fresh in Beckett’s mind is the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.
“Watching those buildings fall and knowing there’s hundreds of firefighters trapped inside, I still feel sick thinking about it.”
He, Langford Mayor Stew Young and retired West Shore RCMP officer Bruce Brown travelled to New York City a week after the attack and stood at ground zero alongside people who had lost their loved ones.
Despite the anger and sadness felt by so many about the lives lost, Beckett wanted to counter the anti-Muslim rhetoric that followed that attack and carried through during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Instead of thinking how terrible these people are, I thought: ‘Why don’t we reach out in kind?’ ”
In 2004, Beckett and a team of Langford firefighters went to Afghanistan to help train firefighters who struggle with limited or outdated equipment. Beckett helped arrange for several delegations of Afghan firefighters and doctors to visit Canada and California for more training sessions and helped donate used firefighting equipment from Canadian fire halls to Afghan fire departments.
On Thursday, the night before he retired, Beckett held a memorial for Atiqullah Jamshedie Mohammadullah, a fire chief in Kabul who died in March while fighting a blaze at a hospital caused by a bomb.
Mohammadullah was among the Afghan firefighters who visited Langford and he stayed in Beckett’s home.
Beckett said while the two didn’t speak the same language, they had enough words to communicate that they were brothers.
In November, Beckett plans to return to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he has helped raise funds to build one orphanage and support another following the devastating earthquake in 2010.
When asked about his next career move, Beckett, 63, said he’s not ruling out a run for elected office. “Politics is another form of giving back to the community.”
