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Highlands Today

Changing Of The Guard

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By Gary Pinnell | Highlands Today

Published: September 17, 2007

LAKE PLACID –– It was about 1:15 p.m. when Adam Hess sat down for an interview. He got out two sentences when tones on his two-way radio sounded. A car had veered off Catfish Creek Road and wound up in low, scrub trees. A hot catalytic converter set the grass on fire.

"This always happens," he said, shaking his head in an apology. "I've got to go."

Hess and a crew took off in the brush truck and an engine.

In the next room was the former chief, Lex Cauffield.

Are you going out on this?

"I'd better not," Cauffield grinned. "My wife would kill me."

But there was another reason why Cauffield declined to fight this fire. In June, he retired. He handed over control to Hess. The right thing to do, he realized months ago, is to let the next generation fire these fires.

On Saturday, the station threw a belated going away party for Cauffield, and Hess graciously thanked his former boss for the lessons learned.

"When I came here, I didn't know anything," Hess confessed. That was just 2001.

But, Cauffield said, a few months ago Hess was elected by the members of Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department. He has their confidence.

"He's been around," Chauffield assured. "He's aggressive with fires."

As for Cauffield, yes, he'll miss the old department. He didn't choke up when Police Chief Phil Williams handed him a plaque with a cutaway of a fire helmet mounted on it, but for a moment, it sounded as if he might.

The fire he'll never forget? That would be around 1989, he can't recall exactly when, or exactly which businesses were in the five buildings that burned, right across Interlake Blvd. from the present department, but some things remain quite clear.

A high wind – 35 or 40 mph – whipped electrical connections to a building against a tin roof.

"It was just a tinderbox out there, a fire waiting to happen," Cauffield said. Chief Jack Saceman was in Tampa, Cauffield was the assistant chief, and took command.

Cauffield talked as if this was his baptism under fire, but he'd been with the department since 1964, three years before he graduated from high school in 1967.

Everyone joined the fire service back then, Chauffield explained. His late father, Ken Cauffield, was a high-ranking fireman, and Cauffield's best friend, Jimmy Creel and his dad, James Sr. were firemen too.

Cauffield walked over to a poster-sized photo of the downtown fire. "I think that's me," he said, pointing to a yellow-clad fireman at the top of a ladder who was peering over the top of the Isabel's Beauty Salon. Everything around it was on fire.

"We were just trying to save something. One building," Cauffield offered. And they did. The hose coming out of the smoke on the left side of the photo was shooting water onto the flat roof of the building.

"There were palm trees in the center of Main Street then. They were 80," he paused to estimate, "90 feet tall. And the tops of them were burned off. That's how high the flames were. The embers were blowing out on Highway 27."

By the way, no one got hurt on that fire, which had such devastating potential.

Like all the other volunteers, Police Chief Williams has a full-time job, but volunteers for the fire service in his off hours.

"I went through the 160 hour fire academy," he said, "to learn how law enforcement could better help. And then I was all dressed up, and I said, I might as well get in there and help."

Cauffield's best command ability, Williams said, is that the fire chief always insisted on doing things right.

Williams recalled a fire which was out when he decided to look inside. Cauffield stopped him.

"Don't go in there without a helmet," Cauffield warned.

"He doesn't have any problem stopping the police chief and telling him what to do," Williams smiled.

"We have to look after each other, Cauffield explained.

The chief's final lesson for the next generation? It was more of an acknowledgment.

"It's going to be a lot tougher than it was," Cauffield said. "More schooling, more training, more toxic
materials out there than there was. It's a lot more technical."

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