Oak Creek Fire Protection District Chief Brady Glauthier has been placed on paid administrative leave and is being investigated by the fire district’s board over allegations that his actions as chief have put firefighters at risk.

David Park, chair of the fire district’s board of directors, said in a statement sent on Friday that he and his colleagues were “aware of some operational and safety concerns that have been expressed by current and former firefighters.”

“There is no comment beyond, (as) this is an ongoing confidential personnel matter that the board is investigating. Chief Glauthier is on administrative leave during the investigation,” the statement added.

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Fire district board members met Saturday and are scheduled to meet again Tuesday evening.

The decision for Glauthier to go on administrative leave, and for the board to investigate his actions, came last week in the wake of at least two complaints sent directly to board members by firefighters who resigned from their employment with the district over their concerns.

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Those two letters of complaint were shared with the newspaper by the individual firefighters who sent them. The letters are public record and both firefighters agreed to have their names disclosed in this article. They also both filed complaints with the state attorney general’s office.

Other current and former firefighters with the Oak Creek Fire Protection District, and individuals with knowledge of similar allegations against Gauthier and the fire district, corroborated events described in the letters of complaint but were not willing to put their names on the record for this story.

Glauthier, who became Oak Creek fire chief in 2021 after the department switched from volunteer to full-time, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

‘Powerless to change things’

After being deployed as part of a cover engine crew to assist with the Sequoia and Los Padres fires in California in late May, John Cooper — a three-year veteran of the Oak Creek Fire Protection District’s Wildland Division — wrote his resignation letter to board members while he was still on that assignment.

In his letter, and with a “heavy heart,” Cooper wrote that he would resign over what he called “a pattern of reckless decision making by Brady Glauthier” — a pattern punctuated by his most recent experience answering the call for those fires in California.

“The incident that has pushed me to the end of my tenure at OCFPD began with Brady listing an engine as available for federal contracts without the knowledge of anyone else, including any of our officers,” wrote Cooper. “We were all shocked when we were told that instead of training like we had planned, we were traveling to Southern California.”

When a wildland fire occurs anywhere in the country and local fire crews need external support beyond mutual aid agreements, a federal portal is available for chiefs to send their equipment and personnel to assist with the fire as requested. When this happens, those agencies reimburse the fire districts who opt in to respond.

Despite the surprising late notice on the assignment, Cooper said he and his fellow firefighters pushed forward because they knew it was “part of the job.”

The problems started when he and the crew had to wait for four hours in Oak Creek for the district’s mechanic to finish working on Engine 837 — the 26,000-pound vehicle they were preparing to drive 1,019 miles to their destination in Southern California.

“(Glauthier) had promised dispatch we would be there at noon the next day, and despite not being able to leave until about 3:30 (p.m.) in the afternoon, we pushed on,” wrote Cooper.

Despite the mechanical concerns, Cooper said the crew set off and made their first scheduled stop at 1:30 a.m. the next day. They left again at 6 a.m. in a push to meet the deadline issued by their fire chief. Then the problems really started.

“At about 8 a.m., we lost all power steering and air brakes while driving 70 mph down I-15 during rush hour traffic in Las Vegas,” wrote Cooper in his letter. “I was thankfully able to steer the truck to the next exit ramp where we reported the incident.”

In his letter, Cooper recalled how Glauthier tried to solve the problem, telling the crew that the fire district’s mechanic “and another firefighter with a chase truck and Engine 836 to switch the engines, repair (Engine) 837, and head home while we continued on.”

He said the crew was told not to have the truck towed and, after “limping” the engine to a nearby parking lot, they were to wait with the engine until help arrived — “and instead of providing lodging for the night, as any other department would, we were ordered to stay with the engine,” wrote Cooper.

“Brady suggested building a lean-to off the engine, which is not only absurd, but as I pointed out, would likely attract even more attention from the large homeless population present in the neighborhood,” said Cooper.

Despite the directive to build a “lean-to” in the parking lot, the crew and fire captains in Oak Creek were able to convince Brady to secure a hotel room for the stranded firefighters, who were told to sleep in shifts while others remained with the engine to “protect it from local threats in the area,” according to Cooper.

“It goes without saying that this is all far beyond what is expected of a wildland firefighter,” wrote Cooper. “We accepted the circumstance and the risk despite this because we had no other choice.”

But it would be Glauthier’s final decision on how to deal with the stranded engine and its crew that “drove (Cooper) over the line,” he recounted.

At around 5 p.m., Cooper said he received a call from another firefighter who had been “ordered to drive alone through the night without a chase rig following and without our mechanic, and also that he himself has been up since 4 a.m. the night before.”

Additionally, the firefighter said the engine he was driving to replace the one broken down in Las Vegas “had no working speedometer or fuel gauge,” wrote Cooper.

Cooper said he questioned his supervisor about the move and that the supervisor said they were “completely unaware” of the directive given to the firefighter heading to Las Vegas.

“It was at this moment that I had to accept that I could no longer work for Brady Glauthier,” wrote Cooper.

The crew would eventually make it to Porterville, California, a full day after Glauthier had promised they would be there, in the new engine, which Cooper noted had been out of service for a year and had failed an inspection in California in June 2024.

Only days before it was driven to Las Vegas, Cooper also noted the engine “suffered an electrical short that resulted in smoke and spark, nearly catching fire while two rookie firefighters were using it.”

Under pressure from fire captains in Oak Creek, Cooper said Glauthier agreed to speak with the crew on speakerphone. Cooper described the fire chief as “angry” and recalled him saying: “You guys don’t want to be firefighters? You don’t want to make money?”

Cooper last week returned safely from the assignment with his crew, and the replacement engine. He said on Sunday that his resignation still stands and that he hopes the contents of his letter are made public.

In concluding his letter, the firefighter said he felt “powerless to change things.”

“And I’m not alone in feeling this way. I will continue to work as a wildland firefighter for as long as I am able. I love the work and I’m willing to put my life on the line every day to protect the communities that we work in from the threat of wildfires,” he wrote.

‘Toxicity of the workplace’

Alex Hawker resigned from the Oak Creek Fire Protection District’s wildland team on May 4, two weeks prior to the beginning of the fire season.

“There were a myriad of reasons that led me to make this tough decision, some being personal and others related to the relentless toxicity of the workplace itself,” she said in a letter sent to the fire district’s board members on June 5.

Hawker worked as a wildland firefighter in Minnesota when she first crossed paths with a crew from Oak Creek that was deployed on an assignment there in 2023.

She said she bonded with that crew and thought about relocating to Oak Creek but decided to stay in Minnesota for another year because “most of what I heard was pure negativity regarding their chief of fire, Brady Glauthier.”

“I can promise the department is losing good firefighters by word of mouth, before even being able to bring them on as part of the team,” Hawker wrote to the board members.

Despite the negativity, Hawker eventually did decide to relocate to Colorado and was hired as a wildland firefighter in Oak Creek in August 2024. She said, for the most part, she rarely interacted with Glauthier, but there were occasional interactions that she said supported the previous complaints she had heard from her colleagues.

Hawker was sent with a crew to the Palisades Fire in California in January in Engine 837 with Glauthier as the “strike team leader” for their engine.

She said the engine made it to California but the night before they were scheduled to check-in, they realized the pump control cable had melted for the second time, having previously melted during an October 2024 fire.

“The engine had not been taken on any other assignments, however, once again had melted before check-in,” recalled Hawker in her letter. “The following morning, we arrived at inspection, and not to our surprise, Engine 837 failed inspection.”

Hawker said that along with the pump, there were about 10 issues that led to the failed inspection.

“After failing the first time, the inspectors were talking to (Glauthier) and during this time, (Glauthier) walked away from the inspectors mid-conversation. They stood there in shock and asked, ‘Did he just walk away from us?’ and in response (our mechanic) said, ‘Yup, that is our chief,'” wrote Hawker.

The crew and their mechanic worked to address the issues until about 11:30 p.m., according to Hawker. At first, she said the entire strike team was held back by the engine’s issues even though the other four engines on the assignment had passed inspection.

“You would think that this would bring embarrassment to our chief who is leading the strike team: The fact that his engine had failed inspection miserably and was holding the entire strike team back. But it did not seem to phase (Glauthier) in the least,” Hawker recalled in her letter.

The engines that passed inspection were eventually sent ahead while Engine 837 and its crew continued to wait for repairs. Finally, at 1:30 a.m., the engine was cleared and the crew reunited with the rest of the Oak Creek team assigned to the fire.

“This fire and check-in experience is just one example of how unreliable and unsafe our Type 3 engines are,” said Hawker.

“Coming from a different wildland fire entity, I know how important having safe trucks is, and I can say confidently that situations that Oak Creek firefighters are placed in with these engines (are) incomparable to what the majority of firefighters at other agencies deal with,” Hawker added.