Fire Chief
Swissvale Fire Department
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Clyde Wilhelm, Fire Chief, Swissvale Fire Department (Pittsburgh, PA)
Chief Wilhelm began his career in public safety in 1982 as a junior volunteer firefighter. He worked as a dispatcher, police officer and detective for nearly a decade and then spent 12 years in the corporate world, working in management for two Fortune 50 companies and building a successful company of his own, before returning to a full-time public safety career in 2010 as Chief of the Swissvale Fire Department.
As Fire Chief, he successfully consolidated a career and volunteer department; implemented training standards; increased services, replaced all equipment and apparatus to current standards and facilitated cooperation between regional departments. He implemented a comprehensive Code Enforcement and Community Risk Reduction program that has reduced working structure fires by more than 75%; reduced a previously upward trend in fire fatalities, which also resulted in significantly increased property values (as well as tax revenue) in his community. These efforts resulted in an improvement in the community’s ISO-PPC rating from a Class 6 to a Class 2. He also successfully wrote and received 34 grants totaling more than $2.6 million.
Chief Wilhelm also served as the Borough Manager from 2014 thru 2020, inheriting a municipal government near fiscal insolvency. He lead a change in culture and a paradigm shift within the local government’s administration and operations. Without raising taxes and increasing revenues by providing contracted services to other municipalities; successfully obtaining and leveraging more than $5 million in grant funding; negotiating and implementing other cost saving measures, he increased services and capital investment while ending each year with a surplus. In 2020, after successfully turning things around, Chief Wilhelm stepped down from the Manager position to focus more time with his family and the fire department.
Chief Wilhelm has received various commendations for his service and accomplishments, including the “Code Official of the Year Award” in 2015 from the Commonwealth Building Officials and the “Distinguished Service Award” in 2019 from the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs.
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Saturday, November 12, 2022
3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
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