County fire department celebrates promotions with pinning ceremony

BERNALILLO — Sandoval County Fire and Rescue recently celebrated several promotions.

Two promotions were highlighted at the regular county commission meeting Jan. 28.

"We had our first promotional ceremony Friday evening; we promoted two battalion chiefs and four lieutenants," Chief Chris Bagley said.

Bagley said the reasons there was such a big group to promote included positions to be filled in Cuba and the shuffling of positions when Bagley was moved up to chief.

At Wednesday's meeting, Javier Galvan and James Pfeifer were promoted to the lieutenant rank. To signal the promotion, their families placed pins on their lapels. 

After the ceremony, Commissioner Mike Meek had a little more to say.

"I'd just like to again thank the families of these two gentlemen, who are now promoting to lead the fire department into the future," he said. "They can't do this without their family, and that family is in it a hundred percent, I guarantee you, and without them their jobs would be 10 times as hard."

Bagley said the several promoted will be the "white shirts" or higher-ranking members of SCFR in the future.