CAIRO – Cairo’s new fire chief hopes to extinguish fires before they start. Education will be an essential part of Cole Prince’s agenda to tackle fire-related issues.

“The easiest way for us to fight the fire is to make sure it doesn’t ever happen in the first place,” said Prince. “Our fire prevention education is a huge part of that for us to keep those numbers down, so we don’t have those kinds of things we have to go out and deal with in the community.”

Prince has been a part of the City of Cairo’s working family since 2007 but has served as fire chief since Aug. 1. His ascension to chief was a result of hard work.

“It feels good to realize a return for all the work that’s been put into it. It’s also quite a bit of responsibility to be able to continue to move forward with the department and to be able to make those kinds of decisions and know those people had the trust in me to make those kinds of decisions,” Prince said.

Cairo City Manager Julian Brown appreciated Prince’s tenacity in moving up through the ranks.

“We had a strong group of applicants, but he rose to the top,” Brown said. “The position was open to internal and external candidates. I always think it’s great if an internal candidate can be hired because it shows to other employees that there is opportunity to move up in the organization.”

Now that Prince is in charge, his main focus is improving community relations and educating adults and children about the importance of fire prevention.

“One of the big things that I’m looking forward to doing is trying to build our presence in the community and beef up our fire prevention; be a little bit more visible than what we have been and really build some better relationships. We’ve had some good relationships with our younger school aged children, but I really want to try to keep that and still move in the direction of our older high school age kids and our adult population. I want to try to build those relationships a little bit better than what we have,” Prince said.