WHATELY – It was many years ago when firefighter John Hannum jumped off a fire truck and ran toward a burning house. A mother was on the second floor, hanging out a window, a baby in her arms, and called down that she was going to drop the baby.

Fatal house fires are devastating for both residents and firefighters. Hannum nervously held out his arms and caught the infant. He explained, “She was worried about smoke, the baby inhaling it, the house was on fire.”  

Whately’s fire chief, 68 years old, has been fighting fires and saving lives for 50 years. The first two decades of his career, the resident of Chestnut Plain Road served on the Amherst Fire Department. For the last 30 years Hannum has been chief in his own town, Whately, where the fire calls often involve hunters rather than babies.

“A tone came in, just before seven a.m., a third party report,” Hannum said of a call last week. The hunter fell out of his tree stand, broke his back and a rib. “We couldn’t get the GPS to work because of the leaves overhead, it went haywire. He was 400-plus yards off the road, and the confusing part was we never found his truck until later in the call.”    

The call exemplifies modern firefighting for Hannum, who implied that it’s a group effort, that these days manpower may be the most difficult piece of fighting fires. Calls come in and the information is incomplete, at best, and the equipment necessary to find a hunter in the forest is also hard to find.

“We go with what we’re told and start from there,” Hannum said. “The tricky part is getting enough help. You have to call for the help, call for ATVs, the para [professionals] ... People you think you might want or need, it’s hard to remember which department can help ... We called the State Police, to put a bear in the air. It came from Lawrence, so we cancelled it before it got here. We got a drone out of Greenfield.”

Hannum’s job satisfaction comes from helping people, or rather, “Directing people to help people.” He no longer trains firefighters, instead leans on his officers and lieutenants to do that, but said he has always enjoyed working with those who taught him how to handle the hoses.

“They aren’t alive anymore,” he said, suggesting how long his tenure in the department has lasted. “They passed away.”

The husband and father of two boys, a grandfather to two grandchildren, Hannum has seen it all in his half century of dousing fires. He also had a piece of advice for the hunter who fell from a tree.

“The best way is to hunt with a partner, a buddy,” Hannum said. “You couldn't prevent this. The chain broke on it. The chain broke out of the tree. [But] I talked to the guy this morning. He wanted his father to take him to Cabelas and buy a new tree stand.”

Hannum plainly loves his job as fire chief and enjoys the camaraderie. He said of those he works with, “If I lost one of my firefighters, it’s time to give it up.”

In the meantime, Fire Chief Hannum will be working on his next half century of fighting fires and saving lives.