West Chicago fire chief retires after 40-year career

A year after Patrick Tanner graduated from Warren High School in 1983, he was back at school — as an 18-year-old, on-call Gurnee firefighter battling a December blaze that destroyed his alma mater.

“I still have a button that I keep that said, ‘I survived the Warren fire in 1984,’” Tanner said.

He’s survived many fires since, including the Karcher Hotel fire in Waukegan five days later on Christmas Day 1984.

A little more than 40 years later, Tanner — since November 2014 the fire chief at the West Chicago Fire Protection District — will retire in a ceremony at 3 p.m. Jan. 10, at the fire district’s Station 6, 200 Fremont St., in West Chicago.

At that ceremony, Deputy Chief Jeffery Keefe also will be sworn in as the new fire chief.

“I’m very much looking forward to it, and I think Chief Tanner has done a great job leading the district into the future,” said Keefe, 45, with the West Chicago Fire Protection District since June 2002.

Tanner, 59, spent the bulk of his career on the North Shore, earning a full-time position as a firefighter with Highland Park’s municipal department in July 1985, passing his first test at 19 years old.

He moved up the ladder as paramedic, lieutenant, deputy chief, and in 2010 was promoted to Highland Park’s fire chief, where he served until moving to West Chicago as fire chief in December 2014.

“It’s never the same thing every day of the week, it’s always different, and I’ve always enjoyed that,” said Tanner, who has lived in St. Charles since taking his position in West Chicago.

“But mainly it’s helping people and that’s where I get my satisfaction, by knowing that I’m helping somebody in some way in probably what’s one of the worst days of their life potentially, and me and my department are making a difference in their life that day. You never take it for granted,” he said.

In 2020, Tanner was the founding chief of the K9/Drone Search and Rescue Strike Team, which uses canine officers and drones to search for lost or missing people. Dispatched out of Northbrook, the Search and Rescue Strike Team has members in nine fire departments from Glenview to Tinley Park.

In another collaboration, the West Chicago Fire Protection District is part of the West Suburban Fire/Rescue Alliance, joining departments from Bloomingdale, Carol Stream, Glenside (Glendale Heights, Glen Ellyn Countryside), Hanover Park, Roselle, Wheaton and Winfield in serving more than 300,000 DuPage County residents.

“I call it a functional cooperation,” Tanner said of the alliance, whose members share guidelines and will work and train together.

Tanner also helped coordinate logistics for Illinois’ relief response around New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“He’s always been an advocate for West Chicago and our area in general, whether that’s serving on committees or being a voice of reason to make sure everybody’s headed in the right direction,” Keefe said.

Tanner is headed in a different direction almost immediately following his Jan. 10 retirement ceremony.

With his wife, Joni, — Jan. 4 was their 39th wedding anniversary — Tanner plans on driving that night to their home in Hilton Head, South Carolina. They’ve had the place for the past couple years, Tanner said, but this will be a full-time, weather-related move.

“I just don’t want to see any more snowflakes for the rest of my life, if possible,” he said.