Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

A community open house Friday will honor retiring Brighton Area Fire Authority Chief Michael O'Brian, who has led the department the past 15 years.

“It’s bittersweet for me because I think the Authority has just some phenomenal things coming up, with the opening of the revised headquarters, here in November. That’s super exciting,” he told WHMI News.

“We’re going to be adding some staff and staffing the station out in Brighton Township. That’s exciting to finally get that building staffed.”

Friday's open house runs from 11:30 am to 3 pm at Station 34 on Dorr Road.

O’Brian came to Brighton in 2007 as fire marshal. He began his career 31 years ago in Northviille Township.

During his time in Brighton, he’s watched the area grow in population, along with the number of calls for service. O’Brian said those have increased from about 1,500 a year, to roughly 6,000 now. Of which, only a small number, he says, are structural fires.

“If you think about all the heart attacks, the strokes, the cardiac arrest calls, all of those incidents come in a much higher volume. And when our firefighters come together as a team with EMS, and make an impact, I think those are the things I truly look back on,” he said.

“Did we as leaders? Did I as fire chief? Ensure our staff had the resources? That we had our eye on changing trends? Training? Did we ensure they had the competencies that were needed to be successful on those really stressful incidences?”

One of his proudest accomplishments, and possibly his legacy, was starting the Howell High school fire academy.
“I think that’s been probably a good case study, for how we’re trying to adjust to everything that is happening. It took some creativity. It takes getting the right people in the room. It takes the right leadership. I think that we’re all pretty proud of that,” he added.

“We have full-time firefighters that went through that academy ten years ago, that are working for us.”

Chief O'Brian plans to stay in the Brighton community, but is shifting into a new position with the International Code Council, a nonprofit sponsored by the building trades, which was founded in 1994 through the merger of three regional model code organizations in the American construction industry.

The ICC creates what it calls the International Building Code and International Residential Code, two model building codes, which have been adopted for use as a base code standard by most jurisdictions within the United States.