When Buckley Fire Chief Alan Predmore saw his honor guard at the Pierce County Fire Chiefs Association awards ceremony, he suspected something was up.

“I usually know when our honor guard is out,” he said. “So it makes you wonder when you walk in the door and see them, ‘What the heck is going on?’”

Predmore was given the Dan Packer Memorial Award for Fire Chief of the Year at a Dec. 3 ceremony attended by fire chiefs and commissioners from throughout Pierce County.

Dan Packer was an East Pierce Fire and Rescue Chief who died while fighting a 2008 California forest fire. The award that bears his name is given – as outlined in the nomination form – to chief officers in good standing with the association, who displays high integrity, care and compassion, and demonstrates a quality performance that goes above and beyond the normal call of duty within Pierce County.

Predmore had no idea he would be given the award or that he had even been nominated, he said.

Predmore was most recently working with the Emergency Incident Management team following the shooting deaths of the four Lakewood police officers. The team operated from the morning of the shooting to the evening following the memorial service, Nov. 29 to Dec. 8. Through the majority of the team’s operation, he ran communication between the planning and operations personnel, then finished the last few days as the chief of the planning section.

The chief gave a very short speech after receiving the award, the best he could muster on such short notice, he said.

“It was quite an honor to be nominated and then selected for the award,” he said. “But my being nominated and selected has to do with having a lot of people working with me and a lot of great peers and other fire chiefs to work with.”