By William Smith
As a 16-year-old junior firefighter for West Burlington, Mark Crooks was fighting fires while most teenagers were getting their drivers licenses.
After a 35-year career in fire protection, including the past 18 years as Burlington fire marshal, Crooks is finally hanging up his gear for good.
“I just think I’m ready,” Crooks said.
Crooks has spent his entire adult life taking calls, missing countless nights of sleep over the past four decades. His final day is June 30. After that, all Crooks will need to worry about is keeping enough gas in the RV while he and his wife travel the country.
“I’m 56 years old now, and there are some things I would like to do,” he said.
Born in Burlington and raised in West Burlington, Crooks and his wife have lived in West Burlington for the past 24 years. They have three boys who went through the West Burlington School District, as did Mark.
His son, Andy, is a paramedic at the Burlington Fire Department. His middle son, Nathan, is an officer for the Burlington Police Department.
Blending his professional family with his blood family has been an unexpected delight for Crooks.
“This whole community has been really good to us,” he said.
A job, then a career
Crooks loved watching crime and emergency shows as a tyke.
But his family had a business selling propane, and Crooks helped out. When he turned 18, he volunteered at the West Burlington Fire Department. But he also worked for his parents, delivering propane cylinders.
He joined the Burlington Fire Department full-time in 1988.
“I thought, ‘what the heck, I’m going to take a shot at it.’ So I went through the whole testing process. I was the second one hired out of three and I’ve been here ever since,” Crooks said.
Crooks signed up to fight fires, and the road to investigating them ran the gamut of the department. Crooks became an EMT, then a paramedic. He met his wife in one of the medical classes.
“When we got married, she went back to school and became a registered nurse, and she’s been working at the hospital (Southeast Iowa Regional Medical Center) since then,” he said.
Crooks was a firefighter/paramedic for about 12 years. He was promoted to shift captain in January 2000. He kept that role for about five years, then took the job as Burlington Fire Marshal. The previous fire marshal was closing in on retirement, which allowed Crooks to learn the job before taking it.
He learned more about the job by becoming a part-time fire inspector for West Burlington in 2003. His father had passed away by then, and his mom had sold the propane business.
“I sat down, and I worked with the building official out there, and he taught me about fire code and how to do inspections,” he said.
Crooks was allowed to work 14 hours a week for West Burlington, which left him little downtime after fulfilling his full-time duties in Burlington.
“It really provided me a good opportunity to learn the codes and do inspections, and work hand-in-hand with a building official,” Crooks said.
“For about five years, I was doing both communities.”
When Crooks was hired full-time as the Burlington fire marshal, West Burlington combined the inspector job with a newly-created fire chief position.
Life as a fire marshal
Due to the nature of his work, Crooks does not have to be at a fire scene until the blaze is extinguished. But he is usually there before then, especially during his shift. He said about 70 percent of the fire calls he has taken over the years are accidental or out of the fire victim’s hands. The rest are deemed suspicious.
If there is enough evidence, that suspicion can lead to an arrest, as it did with the First United Methodist Church fire in 2007. Crooks is proud of the working relationship he has fostered with Burlington police and surrounding law enforcement agencies over the years.
He said that cooperation led to the arrest of a man who set fire to several South Hill homes in 2008. The next year, Crooks investigated a fatal fire that turned out to be a murder.
Dennis Richards was convicted of second-degree murder and second-degree arson for strangling his ex-wife Cyd Richards to death, setting her home in Burlington on fire in January 2009.
There had been a variety of evidence introduced at the trial, such as gas cans and DNA from blood found on Dennis Richards’ clothing.
“I’ve worked with some awesome detectives over the years and very dedicated individuals. It’s been a lot of fun to co-mingle with the two different departments. And because of that, I know many of the police officers down there (Burlington Police Department) on a first-name basis,” Crooks said.
When the Tama building caught fire in 2018, Crooks was hiking with Boy Scouts in Colorado. Two of his sons are Eagle Scouts, and Crooks rediscovered his passion for scouting about a decade ago.
He kept up with the fire despite spotty cell phone reception. He landed right in the middle of the investigation when he returned.
The exact cause of the fire has not been released.
“We can’t release a cause unless we are 100 percent sure,” Crooks said.
Being a fire marshal entails a lot more than fire investigations. Building inspections are a big part of it, and Crooks was on the ground floor of the FunCity complex, ensuring it was up to code.
He works with the Burlington School Administration on school inspections and knows most business owners in town.
“It’s quite interesting,” he said.
A busy future
There is never an ideal time to leave public service. Something always goes unfinished. And plans for the future must be handed to someone else.
The fire department is busier now than it ever has been, Crooks said.
“Back in the late 80s and early 90s, we were averaging about three-and-a-half calls per day,” Crooks said. “Now we’re closer to 17 calls a day.”
The number of fires has not increased. However, people call the police and fire more than they used to. The nature of fire response has changed as well. Despite the number of calls, the number of fires averages about 30 to 50 structure fires a year.
“Back then (in the late 1980s), we staffed one ambulance with two people, and they handled all the calls throughout the city. Now we staff three ambulances, and there are many times where all three ambulances are out at the same time,” Crooks said. “Last month, in April, we had 515 calls department-wide. That’s a combination of fire and EMS.”
The demands on the fire department continue to grow. The influx of apartments in Burlington results in more work for the city and fire inspectors, and the department is interested in obtaining a third fire station to cut down call times.
“It seems like just the sheer number of transports that we have to the hospital is increasing. I mean, it just seems like it’s off the charts. And it just seems to keep creeping up more and more and more every year,” Crooks said.
Life outside the flames
Crooks started driving a West Burlington school bus in 2010, and it has been something he continues to enjoy.
“They were hurting for school bus drivers, and my three kids were in school there. So I was driving activity buses to different sporting events or music concerts or whatever,” he said.
Crooks has continued to drive a school bus after his sons graduated from West Burlington. It has become a hobby.
“I love going to the sporting events anyway. So a lot of the time I’ll sit down and I’ll keep the scorebook. And so there are no better seats in the house than sitting at the scorer’s table,” Crooks said.
That gives Crooks extra pocket money to indulge in his other passions — scouting and camping. He has been a Boy Scout for over 40 years and has a new RV waiting for him.
He will miss the job and, more so, the people. But there is a younger generation of Crooks brothers looking out for the city now.
“All three of my sons worked for the city at one time. Daniel mowed grass in the park one summer when he was on college break. I never dreamed that even one of my kids would ever come to work in emergency services. And here two of them are doing just that,” Crooks said.
