A tree grows in the West Indies known by locals as Gumbo Limbo. When this tree reaches about two feet tall, its limbs begin to snake horizontally. This peculiar way of growing allows the tree to thrive in the strong winds of the islands; it is said to be one of the best trees at withstanding hurricanes. The species, formally Bursera simaruba, flourishes on a private island in the Turks and Caicos Islands known as Ambergris Cay. Much like the Gumbo Limbo, Ambergris Cay's fire chief Chris Gannon has had to bend and twist to flourish in his career. And like the tree, he's weathered a good many storms.

If you've never run across Gannon either in person or by reputation, there's a good chance that you will in the coming years. Gannon quickly is making a name for himself as an innovator on the fire service's international stage; and he's not yet turned 40.

Gannon left a promising career in finance in his native United Kingdom to join the country's fire service. While shooting through the ranks, he was dispatched to help fledgling Eastern European and African fire departments, sent to create a fire department from scratch in Turks and Caicos Islands, then hired away to do the same for a resort island built as a playground for the ultra rich. And he has more irons in the fire.

Gannon has the build and vigor of an athlete — in fact, he played for Turks and Caicos' national soccer team in World Cup competition. He has a motivational speaker's optimism and a scholar's ability to retain information. What this adds up to is an uncanny ability to inspire confidence. He's collected a band of fire industry experts who follow him from project to project. Beyond the adventure, those in Gannon's troupe say they follow him because he is so “switched on,” a term often used to describe their boss' intellect and instincts. So far, this band consists of seven senior staff of four different nationalities; more hires are planned.

“Chris is really switched on,” says Robert Pearce, one of those in Gannon's band. Pearce is a retired training officer from the British Fire Service who now spends some of his time working with Operation Florian, a 10-year-old charitable organization based in the United Kingdom. He first came to TCI in 2004 and was contracted two years later. Pearce picked up the nickname “Silky” in part because he cobbled together a firefighting force mixed with Bosnians and Serbs while working for the British government to establish a fire service in war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina. That these hostile ethnicities could work together in the fire service was the leverage Pearce used to persuade the nation's government to pump money into the fire service. And it is this ability to convince people to part with money, equipment and services, Gannon says, that is the other reason they call him “Silky.”

“He's the smartest person I've met,” Steve Wallace says of Gannon. Wallace is a Canadian expatriate who Gannon hired in 2002 to oversee equipment maintenance. Wallace has the seemingly insurmountable task of keeping a hodge-podge collection of equipment running with little qualified help in an environment harsh on machinery and about as far from a parts dealer as you care to get. “He's been a mentor, and I'll follow him wherever he goes.”

Gannon, younger than both Wallace and Pearce, left TCI with rock-star status earned from the department he built. But that is a far cry from the fanfare and the situation he found when he arrived in 2001.

Turks and Caicos Islands is a collection of about 40 islands, nine of which are inhabited, 550 miles south of Miami and 120 miles north of Haiti. According to the islands' tourism bureau, there are about 30,000 full-time residents and 200,000 tourists, mostly Americans, who come each year. Although London exercises very limited control, the Turks and Caicos Islands fall under British rule. The islands had no fire department before 2001. That and the growing number of tourists left British officials uneasy about their liability. So in early 2001, the government dispatched Gannon to size things up.

“It didn't take me long to realize that there was physically nothing here in terms of law,” Gannon says. “I spent a number of months reviewing all of the islands. It resulted in a big, comprehensive report. On the strength of that, I was asked to come back and implement the recommendations.”

But the British Fire Service's decision to send Gannon to this tropical paradise wasn't simply on the strength of that report. It also was based on his meteoric rise through the service's ranks and his track record abroad. Yet his career began, of all places, in a pub.

Just out of college, Gannon was hired by HSBC Bank in London to trade currencies. He had a nice home, a nice car and plenty of cash. His two best buddies were firefighters and on weekends they'd all swap stories — theirs were better than his. When he eventually convinced his friends he was serious about joining the fire service, they helped him prepare for the tests. He spent six years as a volunteer before being accepted into the British Fire Service in 1993.

He wound up in a community fire-safety role in Peterborough, a city north of London that was experiencing such a large population boom that its emergency services infrastructure was not keeping pace. He led a team charged with finding economical ways to increase protection. Part of what the team did was create quasi-volunteer units that were supervised by career fire personnel. That model then was adopted nationwide. He also developed an arson-reduction strategy that reduced arson in the city by 51% over 12 months. At that time, arson was a growing trend in the country.

Gannon's first overseas assignment came a short time later when he represented the fire service on an emergency-response consulting team sent to Poland; here he built two fire departments where none had existed. After that he was sent to several West African states to revamp their fire services based on the U.K. model. From there he was dispatched to the Ukraine, where the Russians had taken all of the modern firefighting equipment after the fall of the Soviet Union. There, he helped the Ukrainians build fire departments, train and conduct inspections.

“I arrived [in TCI] in late 2001,” Gannon says. “Nobody met me at the airport. Nobody had any clue who I was. There was no office for me, not even a seat.” A lady in the customs department offered to share her workspace. “It was from there, with no budget, that I thought, ‘How on earth are we going to get this thing rolling?’”

Having assessed the islands' emergency-response capabilities, Gannon knew that what awaited him was far worse than cramped seating in a shared office.

“There was really nothing here,” he says. “Fire was dealt with by the citizens as best they could with bucket lines and people stamping fires out with their feet.”

There were some pretty bad horror stories. Children died in a second-story fire because the airport's fire department had no ladders or training. And a car blew up at one motor-vehicle accident when rescuers used a cutting torch to free trapped occupants.

“There were no laws in place, no building codes, no ambulance, no clinic, no hospital,” he says. “It was a pretty harry place to live [and visit], beautiful, but completely devoid of any fire-safety culture whatsoever.”

Worse yet, living conditions among the islands' poor and immigrant population raised the threat of catastrophe. Many indigent families live in makeshift shacks clustered tightly together, some on nearly impassible roads. These homes have spliced power lines and indoor propane tanks. Some immigrants set up mini villages in heavily forested areas to remain undetected. Locals, angry with the squatters, will set fire to these encampments, creating wildland fire hazards.

Having nothing but needs meant resorting to guerrilla-like tactics. So Gannon convinced the local television station to allow him free time to air a telethon to raise money for the yet-unformed fire department.

“I prostituted myself on television and basically begged for money,” he says. The telethon generated a lot of unfulfilled pledges and enough money to buy some rudimentary tools, some bunker gear and a 1975 Ford pumper for $1,100. With no fire station, the pumper was housed outside at a power station and had to be checked everyday to make sure it had not succumbed to the corrosive properties of sea air and still would run.

During the first year, the '75 Ford, Gannon and his one assistant responded to numerous structure fires, sharing a single SCBA set.

“We broke every rule in modern firefighting to knock a fire out before a house would blow,” Gannon says. “I've never taught that and I'd never teach it again. They were desperate times, and we resorted to desperate measures.”

From there he launched a one-man road show going to insurance, banking and hotel associations, as well as Rotary and Lions Clubs and “everybody and anybody who would listen.”

That effort brought in more money and apparatus. By the end of the second year, Gannon had about 12 trucks of varying shapes and sizes parked at the power station. He also got to work setting up a volunteer corp. Gannon and the rookie volunteers trained in empty classrooms and junkyards; they even set small fires in garbage dumps. They did this for six months before Gannon would turn them loose on a real fire. He solicited donations from a local company to buy the group's first uniforms and T-shirts. After two years, he still had zero money budgeted from either the British or TCI governments. But that was about to change.

In his third year, the TCI government ponied up a $200,000 annual budget. Gannon used that money to hire 10 full-time firefighters at $20,000 per year and continued to rely on private donations for equipment purchases.

“I managed to broker a deal with the U.K. training institution, where they were flown to the U.K. and put through 14 weeks of basic training, and it is exactly the same training that a U.K. firefighter would do at that stage,” Gannon says. “We started to spread all of those donated assets around the islands with these basic-trained guys and girls. And that was the infancy of the national project.”

Only one of the original 10 firefighters has left the department.

In 2005, after three years of overseas donations and local contributions, the TCI government gave the department a recurrent and capital budget and seeded it with $1.5 million. The Turks and Caicos Fire and Rescue Service was officially born. The following year, the budget jumped to $5 million and hit $6 million this year. There are now 133 department employees and a batch of volunteers. And while the cash infusion was welcome, it certainly didn't make all of the problems go away.

One of the problems is housing. In 2003 there was only one building on the main island of Providenciales that could house a fire truck. It was a subdivided warehouse about a block long. After negotiating a discounted rent, Gannon moved the department's apparatus from the open-air power station to Unit 6. Gannon says the owner appreciated the department's social significance and had been very generous in helping the department convert the warehouse into a useable fire station.

“Without his help,” Gannon says of the landlord, “those trucks would have deteriorated very quick.”

Part of adapting the warehouse was hauling shipping containers in, stacking them two-high, and setting them up to serve as training rooms and office space.

If all goes as planned, the department will be out of the warehouse and into a brand new fire station in two years. The TCI government is building a new terminal at the airport on Providenciales. The terminal will contain a dual-use station for the municipal and airport fire departments, with one set of doors opening onto the runway and the other onto a main road. The station also will serve as the national training center and have a 40-bedroom dormitory that has gender segregation. There also are satellite stations in the works.

With the new station will come a staffing change. Career firefighters currently work Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Volunteers respond to the remainder of the calls. There are about 500 calls per year and nearly no false alarms. The department will go to 24-hour, full-time coverage with the volunteers serving a reduced support role. And because most of the volunteers hold well-paying, private-sector jobs, Gannon doesn't see them moving into the career jobs.

“They do it simply for their community,” Gannon says of the volunteers. “Once their community is provided for with professional services, they'll be the first to step away from it.”

Pearce says he worries that shifting more responsibility from volunteers to career may hurt the level of protection. The volunteers are mostly ex-pats from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. They are better trained and more motivated than most of the career firefighters, he says.

Early this year, Gannon quit his post with the British Fire Service and as TCI's fire chief for a life in fire consulting. The new TCI chief was the first person Gannon hired, the one who made daily visits to ensure the 1975 Ford would start and run.

And while Gannon says he's pleased with his replacement, Pearce harbors some doubts. Pearce and Wallace have, for the time, remained with the TCI department. But both plan to join Gannon's up-start consultancy business, Global Emergency Solutions.

Once they've all pulled up stakes, the department may implode, Pearce says. The new chief is an island native and has not been able to apply Gannon's level of pressure on local officials to keep the money coming in. He's also not able to enforce the policies the way Gannon did, he says. Pearce speculates that the government may need to hire an outside management firm to keep the department functioning at the level at which it was designed.

Much of Gannon's efforts on TCI were directed at keeping fires from starting and from spreading once they did. The country had no building code or fire regulations. Shortly after he arrived, he inspected one building that had its fire alarm disconnected. The owner had paid for the alarm, but not a maintenance agreement. When the alarm broke, the owner simply disconnected it.

So Gannon created the country's building and fire codes by poring over codes from several other countries and cherry-picking the items from each he felt best suited TCI. He used National Fire Protection Association standards and southern Florida building codes because many of the resort contractors were coming from the United States and were familiar with these regulations. In all, Gannon wrote two pieces of legislation that were approved by London and adopted by TCI in 2005.

“I created legislation that governs the fire department operations and made it the responsibility of the government to finance a fire department and place an obligation on the fire department to meet certain standards,” Gannon says. “The other legislation was fire prevention, fire safety and building codes. The prevention aspect was really the most successful milestone. Getting that legal document produced and being able to write a country's legislation was fantastic. A lot of thought and effort went into that.”

As Pearce and Wallace are seeing in the post-Gannon fire department, enforcement in the island culture is always an issue. “Beating people with a stick in this region isn't effective,” Gannon says.

To be less punitive and still effectively enforce the new codes, Gannon spent the money to offer free fire-safety code training to contractors. After completing the training, the contractors were certified. And certification was a requirement to do work on the islands.

“It gave me accountability so if the fire alarm in a building was malfunctioning, the guy better respond with in 24 hours or he'll lose his contract and be taken off the fire departments list of approved contractors,” Gannon says. “When you walk around now, the buildings are very compliant with fire alarms and sprinklers in place.”

So with most of the struggles behind him and things moving in the right direction, why would Gannon up and leave? Why leave the comfort and security of a government job short of retirement benefits for the uncertain world of consulting?

Part of the answer is that Gannon spotted a need for this kind of size-up and implementation. It became more obvious to him since 2004 because the British government had been sending him to other territories and other countries to help shore up their fire services. For example, he did a review of the Falkland Islands' fire service in late 2006. In fact, he was being called out so often that he was devoting less and less time to TCI.

Another part is that during his time assessing and building fire departments, and arguably even his time in finance, Gannon developed a system for starting or improving fire departments. He holds the details of that system close to his chest, but it involves tapping into the private sector and donor organizations. In fact, he guarantees that there will be private investment. It also involves staying on the ground to implement the suggested improvements. He says it is a very strict methodology and that he's been careful to see if anyone else is doing it; he says they are not.

“That's the way I operate, and it works extremely well,” Gannon says. “What I bring from donations makes the project very cost effective.”

He admits that he has had to work harder to establish credibility because of his youth. When he meets government officials, their first reaction is to look past him to see if more-experienced guys are following him into the room.

“I'm young,” he says. “At first there's a little bit of resistance and suspicion. I'm a very unorthodox fire chief, extremely laid back and not very militaristic in my approach. I believe in embracing the culture I go into rather than imposing my own.”

Another reason for striking out on his own is the challenge. With TCI's fire department built and running, Gannon wanted a new project to tackle.

“I'm a set-up person,” he says. “I like to go in and build things. Manage it? No interest. The thrill is leaving your mark, handing it off to local people and occasionally coming in and reassessing it to make sure it is on track.”

So Gannon and his band are sort of like fire mercenaries? Yes, he says, “mercenaries” is pretty close.

His first project as a full-time independent was almost the complete opposite of the TCI project as one could get, with the exception of geography.

Ambergris Cay is about 20 minutes by propeller plane from Providenciales. The 1,100-acre island is managed by DPS Sporting Club Development Co. for Greenbrier Resort & Club Management Co. The island is 1.5 miles wide and 3 miles long and is being developed as an exclusive private resort with home prices as high as $6 million. At the far end of the island there are luxury safari tents that rent for $1,200 per night. Most of the lots on Ambergris Cay have been sold and many of the homes are built. (During my stay on the island, one of Venezuela's wealthiest families was visiting, as was Rick Elfman and his family; Elfman is part owner of the Chicago White Sox and DriFire, a firefighting undergarment fabric.)

“We've got movie stars investing there and incredibly high net-worth individuals,” Gannon says of the island's clients. “The draw is, if you are not invited, you can't come. Everything is at your beck and call. It is fantasy island.”

To accommodate these owners, the island needed top-notch fire service and an international airport. The company brought in Gannon and gave him a virtual blank check to get everything up and running.

“The opportunity to go to [Ambergris Cay] and set up a full-blown category-six international airport, an ARFF department, a municipal fire ministry, and disaster planning for the rich and famous has been a real blast,” he says.

The catch: he had to do it all in four months. He had to design and build a fire station, hire and train firefighters, buy apparatus and equipment, understand and meet international airport safety regulations, and design and install a hydrant system. The firefighters were hired from among the ranks of current employees who have living quarters on the island. For them, firefighting is a second job. For Gannon, the challenge was that none of his crew spoke English as a first language.

“Imagine teaching those guys to become professional firefighters in four months,” he says. “[The job] was night and day, no sleep, get it done — an incredible challenge. It is probably the best fire department in the country now and done inside of four months.”

Those four months have come and gone and Ambergris Cay has its professional department, which means it's gone from project to maintenance. And Gannon is a projects guy, not a maintenance guy.

“I've got people in the field right now working on projects in South America, Eastern Europe and West Africa,” Gannon says. He's working out a deal right now to evaluate Bolivia's fire service and the Peruvian government wants to meet with him later this summer. There also have been inquires from departments in Europe and the United States. “Who knows where it is going to end.”

Wherever Gannon and his band of fire mercenaries lay down roots, they will bend and twist with the influences of the local culture, and in the process, bend the shape the fire service. And when the job is finished and put in the hands of local authorities, they'll seek out new soil.

Driving TCI

Of all the problems confronting the Turks and Caicos Fire and Rescue Service, the most deadly and hardest to solve is motor-vehicle accidents. Drive past the Avis car rental agency, as I did, and you're likely to find a row of subcompact automobiles with moderate to severe front-end damage.

The situation there is a cocktail of deadly conditions. The island has no laws governing drinking and driving. Most of those drivers are American tourists. Turks and Caicos is a British territory and, like in the mother country, you drive on the left side of the road. There are no signs, as you would see driving out of London's Heathrow airport, reminding drivers of the left-hand drive pattern. Many, possibly more than half, of the vehicles are American-style with the steering wheel on the left. Most roads are poorly lit and many have no lighting at all. There are no mandatory insurance laws and no driver-education requirement for obtaining a driving license.

It gets worse. The national speed limit is 40 mph. This wasn't a problem in the early part of the decade because most roads were gravel or dirt and too bumpy to be driven in excess of the speed limit. Now, most of the unpaved roads have been replaced with smooth asphalt and 60 or 70 mph is common.

On the main island of Providenciales, there were 11 motor-vehicle fatalities in 2007, and they average about six accidents per day. The island is only 13 miles long and 1 mile wide.

During his time as the island nation's first fire chief, Chris Gannon brought in extrication experts from the United Kingdom to train career and volunteer firefighters. And despite their high level of skill, first responders don't perform as many extrications as they should. That's because it is up to the police to call for such help at an accident scene. And, Gannon says, because of interagency competitiveness, they often don't make that call.

In fact, while visiting the islands, I was driving in an official fire department vehicle with two of Gannon's crew when we came upon an accident. Both cars had major front-end damage and their airbags had been deployed. When we stopped, a police officer directing traffic approached. Robert Pearce, Gannon's training expert, asked if there were injuries and if he could help. The officer waved us on, saying everything was fine. Pearce drove away slow; it was dark and although some involved in the accident were standing outside the wrecked vehicles, it was difficult to tell if any were injured. He drove down the street, turned and made another slow pass.

But none of that mattered, Pearce said, because even if they spotted injured people, they couldn't throw on the lights and take over the scene. The by-invitation-only policy frustrates Gannon's Western fire experts.

At present, there is no 911-type system and all calls go into the police department. There is a 911 project under way that is partially functional, but it is about 12 months from full completion.

It gets worse yet. When an ambulance is dispatched, its personnel can perform basic life support. But there's no hospital for the victims; one is under construction and should be finished in a couple of years. In the meantime, there is a clinic with what Gannon calls a rudimentary emergency room.

“We have a surgeon now, which we didn't always have,” Gannon says. “Anything more serious, and you rely on a medivac to Miami, to the Bahamas, or to Cuba.”

But TCI doesn't have these aircrafts, meaning one would have to be dispatched from the host country. An airlift to Miami could take six hours.

“There's that golden hour that we talk about,” Gannon says, “an hour from the moment of impact until you get on the surgeon's table. Of course, in the Turks and Caicos, that's very difficult to achieve.”

Water Misers

As with most island communities, fresh water is a valuable commodity on Turks and Caicos Islands. An underdeveloped and poorly maintained water infrastructure adds to this problem.

TCI has about 25 hydrants, 20 of which are buried underground because they were patterned after U.K. hydrants.

“That's completely inappropriate for a Caribbean environment,” says the nation's former fire chief, Chris Gannon. “If you were lucky enough to locate a hydrant, it was usually full of sand and not working.”

Therefore, Gannon designed a firefighting system where most of the water was brought to the scene. He worked with Rosenbauer to specially design an apparatus that would carry 750 gallons of water, ladders and rescue tools. Rosenbauer and Darley were his main suppliers. With a limited budget for equipment, TCI needed an all-purpose vehicle. For every fire call, the apparatus is paired with a 2,000-gallon tender. In a pinch, the fire department can tap into a building's fresh water supply, which can be as much as 20,000 gallons.

“It's a fusion of European and North American technology,” Gannon says. “This is ideal for a country where your water supply is limited and your budget doesn't allow you to run a pump company, a hose company, a ladder company and a rescue company.”

“Chris worked with our standard Timberwolf vehicle and made modifications to meet TCI's needs,” says Kevin Kirvida, president of General Safety Equipment, one of Rosenbauer's American partners. “Chris did a good job of figuring equipment space and layout, and to have some consistencies with their existing fleet and U.K. influence.”

This apparatus is part of a controversial firefighting tactic. TCI uses a 1-inch hoseline with ultra-high-pressure system.

“A lot of U.S. visitors have frowned at this method when they've come down here,” Gannon says. “They are used to having a hydrant every few 100 yards and large water supplies.”

Mike Wisby, program manager for the Texas Engineering Extension Services, says this method was tried in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s and the United Kingdom still uses small-diameter initial-attack lines.

“With small-diameter lines, you cannot achieve the required flow rate for both the attack and backup lines,” Wisby says. “I am not aware of any [U.S.] department using the system now.”

However, Gannon maintains that when done right, this system is the best way to fight fire with a limited water supply.