Buffalo Grove announces new fire department chief

About four months after Fire Chief Tim Sashko announced his retirement, Buffalo Grove has hired a new head of the fire department.

Terrence Vavra, who currently works as deputy chief for the Lisle-Woodridge Fire District, will take over as the village's fourth fire chief in March.

Village Manager Bill Brimm announced the new chief at the village board meeting Monday and said his staff will be sitting down with Vavra this week to work out the details of his hire.

Vavra, who has spent his whole career since 1976 at Lisle-Woodridge, said he was attracted to Buffalo Grove because the town seems to have a sense of community.

"My wife and I said this would be the kind of place we'd like to go forward to," he said.

He was also impressed by the professionalism on Buffalo Grove's part, he said.

"It's not only a place I'm excited about going to work, I'm going to be proud to work for them," Vavra said.

Brimm said on Monday that Lisle-Woodridge covers a 32-mile area, serves 72,000 people and is largely recognized as one of the top districts in the state.

Vavra said he started there as a paid-on-call firefighter when he was 18. At the time he still had aspirations to be an architect, but the fire-fighting lifestyle pulled him in.

"It's a bug that you catch; it's infectious," he said. "Now I can't see myself doing anything else."

Vavra moved up in the ranks at the Lisle-Woodridge district, working as deputy chief since 2004.

He said he's learned from the chiefs he's worked under there and hopes to bring that experience to Buffalo Grove.

"I have lots of ideas, but I'm going to have to see how they're going to fit in the mix," he said. "That's one thing I've learned in the fire service: You can't make those decisions without getting all the information."

Vavra will start in the village on March 3, when he will also be sworn in at the board meeting that night. He will leave the Lisle-Woodridge department on Feb. 22.

The village started looking for a replacement for Sashko in October after he retired to take a job as chief in Mundelein. The board agreed to pay the PAR Group $21,000 to conduct the search. Deputy Chief Peter Ciecko served as interim chief of the department during the search.