By Hannah Curran, Editor
CENTER POINT — The Center Point Fire District swore in a new fire chief last month.
Alexander “Alex” Nabors has over 26 years of experience, helping to serve three cities throughout his career. In the 50-plus years of The Center Point Fire District, Chief Nabors is only the 6th Fire Chief to be sworn in.
Nabors’ family is from the Trussville area, with his grandfather sitting on the Trussville City Council for years and was a founding member of the Trussville Utilities Board; his roots run deep in the community. After his parents graduated, they decided to move to California, but feeling the pull to come back home, they moved back to the Trussville area in 1990, and that is when Nabors was first introduced to firefighting.
Firefighting was not a new concept to Nabors, with his uncle being a firefighter in Birmingham and serval friends that were firefighters. Still, he never knew firefighting was an option for him until his mother introduced him to former Trussville Fire Chief Joe Parker.
“I fell in love with it, and Trussville Fire Department, at the time, was all-volunteer, but they paid for me to go to paramedic school, and they also paid for me to go through rookie school,” Nabors said.
Nabors has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in public service administration and is also a graduate of the National Fire Academy’s prestigious Executive Fire Officer program and the Alabama Public Safety Leadership Academy.
He started his career in 1990, working with the Trussville Fire Department as a volunteer firefighter before taking a full-time firefighting position with the Irondale Fire Department in 1993. Then in 1995, Nabors began working with the Center Point Fire Department.
“Since that time, I have worked both places continuously,” Nabors said. “I worked 24 hours for Irondale, and then I would have one hour to go from there to Center Point, and then I work 24 hours there. Then I was off for 23 hours before doing it all over again.”
Working his way up the ranks in both departments, he was named Battalion Chief in Irondale and Center Point. Now being named Fire Chief for Center Point, Nabors is finishing his career with the Irondale Fire Department but plans to continue working with them to support the community.
“I feel proud to be a part of multiple organizations; I still consider myself part of the Trussville Fire Department because I got my start there,” Nabors said. “I feel proud to be a member of the fire service in general. I’m grateful for Center Point for giving me this opportunity to lead and direct a tremendous group of people into the future and see what this holds.”
Nabors said he would not be in the fire service at all, and he owes it all to Chief Parker for giving him the opportunity.
“I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Trussville Volunteer Fire Department and Chief Parker, who gave me an opportunity to build a career, and I will never forget that,” Nabors said.
Now, as Center Point Fire Chief, Nabors looks forward to the growing future of the fire department.
“I think what I’m looking forward to most is working together with all of our partners to create something that is already special but is so unique that you can’t find it anywhere but here,” Nabor said. “It’s not me. It’s something that the firefighters here, the three city leaders, all of us can create something that really can’t be duplicated anywhere else; it just doesn’t exist. We have so many opportunities, and I’m looking forward to the challenge of putting forward all the ideas.”
The Center Point Fire District responds to three cities, Clay, Center Point, and Pinson, and some of unincorporated Jefferson County.
“We have a great relationship with the Palmerdale Fire Department, with which we share part of Pinson,” Nabors said. “We have a tremendous relationship with all of our three cities. They support us in almost everything we do. We try really hard to make sure we support them as a community because we want to be part of all three communities. So it really is a unique environment for us to be in.”
Nabors explained that his career would not have been as successful without the support of his family and co-workers. He married his wife, Kristy, just after starting his career as a firefighter, and she has stood by him throughout his entire career. Nabors also has four children, Caitlyn, Samantha, Addyson, and Landon, ranging in age from 22 to 11 years old.
“My career would not be possible without my wife,” Nabors said. “It is my wife and my kids, my co-workers that have made all this possible. I can work as hard as I want, and I have worked hard to get here, but without the mentors that have been at all three departments and without family without God, none of this is possible.”
Nabors worked for Former Center Point Fire Chief William Eugene “Rhino” Coleman for 10 years, from lieutenant to captain to battalion chief; Nabors said that Coleman had a significant impact on his career.
“He is instrumental in me being in the seat that I’m in; he was able to do some things, working 48’s, having a strong family, having a strong wife, having strong kids, that really showed that it was possible to a lot of us,” Nabors said.
Moving forward as fire chief, Nabors said he plans to pull everything he learned in his career and build on that.
“I think that you have to know where you came from in order to move forward,” Nabors said. “So you can’t throw away all the past there; in order to start moving forward, you take what they gave you, and that’s how you move forward.”
Nabors office has a whiteboard that he calls his “brain board.” All of his thoughts go on that board; the things he wants to do, the things that he has wanted to do for years, he puts on there. So anybody that walks by his office will see what’s on his mind.
“When people go by and say, ‘Hey, Chief, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?’ So I put it on the board,” Nabors said. “I assign people to them; actually, they really assigned themselves to it. So what I want to do in the future is to go as far as we can, with what we have available, and meet the needs of our community to the best of our ability.”