The Wales Municipal Center at 175 Centre Road in Wales April 8. (Russ Dillingham/Staff Photographer)
Months after a majority of Wales firefighters resigned over concerns with the department’s leadership, Chief Scott Dimmick remains on the job.
“He is rebuilding the department,” said Eric Gagnon, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, adding that the number of firefighters in the department is back up, and training has increased in recent months.
“While we do have some inexperienced crew, we also have some very experienced crew and everyone is working together in training and the atmosphere is positive,” he said. “We are responding to calls and have more firefighters showing up for calls than before the resignations.”
In April, around a dozen firefighters resigned, saying Dimmick was not qualified to run the department safely. That left the department with seven members; mutual aid fire departments agreed to make sure the town and its residents were protected for fire coverage and other emergencies.
Selectmen then voted to hire an independent investigator to look into firefighters’ allegations.
Selectmen met with the investigator on July 14 in executive session to go over the report, Gagnon said.
The investigator concluded that there were no grounds for discipline, he said. Any discipline would be a public record under state law.
“After that session the board took no action and is not going to take any action,” Gagnon said. “Chief Dimmick is still the fire chief and we did just reappoint him as rescue chief.”
The fire department has open training every Monday and attendance is good, Gagnon said.
The town has 16 firefighters, Dimmick wrote in an email Monday. Before April 7 there were 18.
According to Dimmick, from July 1, 2025, until April 7, when the firefighters quit, there were 134.33 hours of training done. From April 8 to June 30, firefighters trained 306.5 hours.
In that same period, he said, the number of personnel responding to a call almost doubled.
From July 1, 2025, to April 7, the average response was 2.29 people. From April 7 to June 20, the average has been 4.38 people.
