Meet Bangor Professional Firefighters President Jeremiah Titus
PHOTO: IAFF 772 President Jeremiah Titus with Past President Jared Willey.
In January, Bangor Professional Firefighters member Jeremiah Titus was elected President of the International Association of Firefighters Local 772 to succeed former President Jared Willey.
A native of Vassalboro, Titus previously had another career working as an agricultural consultant with his father prior to joining the Bangor Fire Department. After working for years helping farmers with their potatoes, corn, fruit orchards and dairy farms, Titus got his first exposure to professional firefighting at the Hancock County Fire Academy in 2010. At the time, he was a volunteer firefighter in the small town of Sullivan, but didn’t know that he could make it his full time job.
“I rode in Engine One for two days and I had such a great time,” he said. “I didn’t realize that it was a job that existed in Maine. It’s like a kids’ dream job and I didn’t think it was even possible. So when I saw it was achievable to get this kind of job in Maine I decided I wanted to give that a shot.”
Titus says he was attracted to work in the fire service because he loves helping people and the instant gratification he gets in knowing that he made a difference in people’s lives. He said he, like many firefighters, have “some level ADHD,” which makes him well suited for a job where every call is different.
“It’s just the kind of job that fits really well for that kind of personality,” Titus said. “You’re doing whatever around the station and then suddenly you have to do this really exciting thing. Then that’s done and you’ve got to do something else. It’s just exactly the way my brain wants to work.”
Bangor, like other professional fire departments in Maine, also performs EMS duties so he also had to train to become a professional paramedic. Firefighter/paramedics need a lot more training than they once needed as they deal with so many different hazards on the job. Different materials are burned up in fires nowadays and they need to be trained to deal with potential dangers when responding to accidents because modern vehicle safety features like airbags can be deadly.
“There’s a lot of dangerous stuff and you have to be prepared for what you’re going to face,” he said. “It’s not as simple as just putting water on fire, there’s so much more.”
First responders are also on the front lines of the drug epidemic. They respond to drug overdoses and save lives. That can be very exhausting and emotionally draining, especially when they are saving the same people over and over.
“Sometimes it seems like we care about them more than they care about themselves,” he said. “A lot of people just don’t understand the addiction process or the way it works. It’s easy to get compassion fatigue when you have Narcan’d the same person three, four or five times.”
Compassion fatigue is a state of emotional, physical, and spiritual exhaustion that can occur when individuals, particularly those in helping professions, are exposed to the suffering of others.
Joining the fire service involves a substantial amount of sacrifice as firefighters live a good part of the week at the fire house responding to calls at all hours.
“You give up a lot of freedom when you’re there, but the union members before us created this work-life balance that’s really nice,” Titus said.
In the beginning he said that there were only two crews of firefighters at the Bangor Fire Department and they spent half their lives at the station. IAFF 772 has since negotiated for four different crews, so now they spend a quarter of their lives at the station, doing one day on, one day off, then one day on and five days off. In recent years, IAFF locals around the state have followed Bangor's example and won contracts reducing the work week from 56 hours to 42 hours.
The union culture is very strong at the Bangor Fire Department and when Titus started working there it was the first time he had ever been exposed to unions. His father’s business was just a two-man show, though his mother had been involved in her union and even negotiated a few contracts as a teacher at China Elementary School. Both of his parents are very involved in their community and this civic mindedness was instilled in him from a young age. Titus became one of the more active members in IAFF 772 who could be depended on to help keep the union strong. Out of 88 members, he says there are about a dozen who will do something and about five or six will do the more involved work. Because of his hard work and dedication, Titus was asked to run for the executive board and most recently president.
As IAFF 772 President, Titus says his goal is to be more transparent, make more information accessible and help members take more ownership of their union.
“We have a new chief who has been very effective for us and willing to collaborate,” he said. “We’re hoping when we get a new city manager this summer that this person is willing to play ball with the big changes that need to come in Bangor."