Hail to the chief. After several months of recruiting efforts, Whitehorse has a new fire chief on the way.

Travis Whiting, the current chief of B.C.’s Kelowna Fire Service, is due to take up the reins of the department in the proverbial “hot seat” in early March.

He told the Star Wednesday he and his wife have been visiting the Yukon several times a year for the last four years, kindling a love affair that happened to coincide with an ideal job opportunity.

“We’ve fallen in love with the area and with the people,” Whiting said.

“We have some friends up there, and made some more. It’s been such a warm and welcoming community that we really started to look at where we want to spend the next chapter of our life, and Whitehorse definitely came to mind as a place we wanted to be.

“Last fall, an opportunity to do that came together. It just worked out that the opportunity happened to be there and we were ready for a change.”

Whiting has been working in Kelowna for several years, and is originally from Williams Lake, B.C. He’s spent his career as 
a firefighter.

“Firefighting is a passion I’ve had since I was a little kid,” he explained.

“There’s something about it that’s always of interest to me, and that I always though was cool. In my early 20s, a couple of really close friends joined the fire department. I was a few months behind.”

One of the appealing factors of the job, Whiting said, was serving the community.

“I started with the City of Williams Lake back in ’97, I think it was. I spent about 10 years there as a firefighter.”

From there, Whiting went to Victoria for another position supervising a variety of programs, including emergency management for a further eight years.

Restless once more, Whiting headed to the B.C. interior and Kelowna, where he was the deputy fire chief for two years.

Seven years ago, the chief’s position opened up, and he won the job.

That, obviously, has given him a fairly impressive résumé at age 50.

“I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up,” he said with a laugh.

Whiting already has a couple things in mind for his term with the Whitehorse department.

“Expectations-wide, I’ve already had an opportunity to talk to my team up there, and I’ve talked with people who know the department, and I’ve heard great things. That’s very positive.

“It’s a very professional department, and I’ve very excited to come into a department that has a passion and ability to serve the community,” Whiting added.

“I just want to work with them. I believe in continuous improvement, and the challenge to be ready for more and more things. The one thing that is most consistent is that the better prepared we are, the better we can respond.

“That’s better for firefighter safety and community safety. So I just want to continue to push (for improvements).”

Whiting expanded on that, saying success is less about the nature of the event than understanding what your capacity is to handle it.

“I want to know exactly what the risks are and what we have in place to handle them.

“I’ve got to get up there and I’ve got to meet with my team, and listen to the people who are up there to tell me where we’ve got concerns.”