Area fire, police agencies cope with military call-ups

By Elizabethe Holland
Of the Post-Dispatch

If Henry Williams gets the call he is expecting any day from the Naval Reserves, his bags are packed, his will is signed and his family has been briefed.

As for the potential firefighters he has yet to interview, the work schedules he has yet to draft and the other fires – real and figurative – he has to douse, those issues will have to be handled by someone else.

“The Fire Department will keep moving,” said Williams, chief of the Berkeley Fire Department and a military reservist. “We have people who are capable of taking over if I have to go. … We’re sworn to provide a service to our city, and one man won’t stop that.”