North Whidbey: Meet your new fire chief.

Mike Brown, 58, is the boss of North Whidbey Fire and Rescue, the people who come to give you a hand if you get into trouble outside city limits from Deception Pass to Libbey Road.

He knows the island after serving as the deputy chief for the district the past three years.

He came here for retirement after nearly three decades of experience as a firefighter and battalion chief for San Ramon Valley, a big-city fire district in the San Francisco Bay area.

His wife likes to point out he’s failed at retirement.

Chief, she’s right.

“I wanted to be working,” he said.

He’s got his work cut out for him. The last chief, Marv Koorn, left the district in solid financial shape. The district is building a new $1.5 million station at Troxell Road with cash, which is virtually unheard of for a small public agency.

Still, there are challenges ahead and Brown knows it.

The district stretches over 55 square miles and includes seven fire stations. Some of them were built with cinder blocks decades ago by volunteers.

Brown warned that even with continued prudent spending, the district may need to come back to the voters to replace or update four of the district’s stations. He doesn’t want to wait years to upgrade all those stations.

“They are good for keeping rain off firetrucks,” he said. “But if we have a major earthquake here, what’s going to happen? I’m concerned about what that’s going to look like in a major disaster.”

He’s concerned about whether we’re ready for a catastrophic disaster, and he wants to better prepare the community. Experts expect that a devastating earthquake in the Northwest isn’t a matter of if but when.

The standard advice used to be ready to take care of you and your family for 72 hours. If we lose the bridge, this community may need to be self-reliant for far longer, he said. What the island does have in its favor is that many people outside city limits have wells, septic systems and their own generators.

Even so, he said, “I’m not sure that’s enough.”

Here’s another conversation he wants to raise: Should the district move to a professional force?

North Whidbey is mainly a volunteer force. Most of the firefighters who jump out of bed at the dead of night to help you receive a small stipend for their service -— enough for a pastry and coffee at Starbucks the next morning.

The fire department does much more than fight fires. They deploy boats when someone is in trouble in the water. They save people who fall down steep bluffs. They show up at your door for medical emergencies.

The chief can’t compel volunteers to work. Sometimes that leaves shifts unfilled at stations. While someone is always available to help, that may increase response time. At some point, there may be too many calls for the district to handle.

“We don’t have the consistency of a fully-staffed organization,” he said.