Jeff Clark’s interest in firefighting was first sparked when, as an eight-year-old, he watched firefighters save a barn that was ablaze near his family’s house in Hicksville.
“I saw them put that fire out and I thought that was really brave. I wanted to be among men like that.” Clark said.
Clark followed that dream and recently – more than 40 years later after watching the fire near his family’s home – Clark was appointed chief of the Mineola Fire Department.
Clark said the impulse to help had stayed with him years after the Hicksville fire but he didn’t act on it until his Mineola neighbor and volunteer fireman Rick Ueland encouraged him to join the Mineola department 16 years ago.
Clark consulted his wife, Maureen, who was then expecting their sixth child.
“You always wanted to do it. So do it,” he said she told him.
So Clark, 49, started serving in Mineola Fire Department Ladder Co. 2 successively serving two years as secretary, 2nd lieutenant, 1st lieutenant, and then captain of the company, nominated by Ueland, who has become a close friend. In the line of command to become chief, he has served as 2nd assistant chief and 1st assistant chief over the past four years before taking the top command position earlier this month.
“I’m very exiceted about it. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time now,” Clark said.
His introduction to what firefighting was all about occurred at a basement fire on Old Country Road after he had been in the fire department for about six months.
The fire was in the rear of the basement and at one point when he was in the basement, he didn’t realize a window he thought was draped with a black curtain appeared that way because of the thick smoke. After the fire was extinguished, one of the chiefs showed him that a treadmill in the front of the basement, far from the point of the fire, was a tangled mass of melted plastic from the intense heat.
“It really made you aware of the dangers you could be put in,” Clark said.
But nothing could have prepared him for the two fatalities that occurred in a house fire 10 years ago, or the round-the-clock marathon the Mineola volunteers endured during Hurricane Sandy last fall.
“That was quite an event for us,” he said, recalling that he arrived at the firehouse at 9 a.m. on Sunday, the day before the hurricane struck.
The first of more than 80 calls the Mineola firefighters ultimately responded to during the big storm came on Monday morning and they continued non-stop through Tuesday morning. The biggest problem they faced was a downed wire that ignited a fire at a house on Latham Street. In the absence of assistance from the Long Island Power Authority, the firemen couldn’t do anything about the wire, but they extinguished the fire.
“We were getting called out all night for downed wires and trees,” Clark recalled.
Along with keeping their village’s residents safe, a unit of Mineola’s Co. 3 was dispatched in the early morning hours on Tuesday to help fight a fire in Island Park. Clark led a crew at 11 a.m. that morning to assist on a call in Freeport, returning to Mineola at 6 p.m. with alarms still sounding there.
“We were still getting called for wire and tree issues,” he said.
He finally got home to sleep in his own bed on Wednesday night that week.
He credits the chiefs who have preceded him in command of the department for improving the safety of their firefighters with new helmets, boots and turnout gear.
Clark said he’s instituting an annual inspection of the department members’ fire gear “to make sure they’re well prepared.”
He said he also plans to boost educational programs for fire prevention in the schools and among all residents.
Acknowledging the department’s volunteers already do “a lot of training on Sundays and Monday nights, Clark said he wants to increase the frequency of cross-training between fire companies. So he’s implemented a new regimen for Mineola firemen to voluntarily train with companies besides the companies in which they are members.
“The goals is to make them feel comfortable wherever they’re needed at a fire scene,” Clark said.
He said he spends a lot of his free time at the firehouse and said the Mineola volunteers are “quite a family.”
“I love the fire service. The camaraderie is great,” he said.
He’s hoping to enhance that feeling with more departmental events. Two years ago, he said he started the Fire Chiefs Kentucky Derby Barbecue to raise money for the department’s softball team.
Professionally, Clark is director of government affairs for Cablevision Systems Corp., working on franchise pacts with the 64 villages, three towns and two cities the cable company serves in Nassau County. He’s worked at Cablevision for the past 19 years, starting in public relations and community relations before taking his current position 15 years ago.
An experienced speechwriter, Clark is also a published author.
He wrote “Dad’s Masterpiece,” about the legacy left by young Massapequa soccer star Patricia Masotto, who died at 20 years old in a car struck by a drunk driver.
Clark is currently working on a novel, “Thin Air,” about two brothers in college on the New York-Canadian border who start smuggling kegs of Canadian beer into the U.S. and discover they’ve unwittingly been smuggling arms for the Irish Republican Army.
Clark maintains his own legitimate interest in the cause of Ireland’s unity as president of Irish Americans in Government for the past two years. He’s been a member of that organization for 17 years. He’s also served as chairman of the parade the Irish American Society of Nassau, Suffolk and Queens staged in Mineola last year.
A member of the Nassau Community College Foundation Board for the past four years, he became the board’s chairman seven months ago.
