Los Lunas Fire Department improves ISO to 3, increases personnel in 2025

LOS LUNAS — Talking about the current status of the Los Lunas Fire Department, Chief John Gabaldon sounds very bullish about the department as it enters the second half of the year.

“The internal growth has been amazing,” Gabaldon said enthusiastically. “We’ve been fortunate. All of our firefighters are great. They’re professionals, they do a good job every day for our community.”

Including civilian staff, Gabaldon said LLFD is at 41 personnel currently, with “boots on the ground” firefighters number 33, including lieutenants, which is a big change from the department in the 2010s.

“When I started 10 years ago, we were at 14, 15 on the books,” the fire chief said. “The numbers we’ve increased by in 10 years, what was that, 156 percent. All this growth has helped us, and we recently were moved from an ISO level 4 to a level 3, and missed a level 2 by 0.7.

“Still, that’s room for improvement, right? We’re always striving to do better, and so is our team. They’re always striving to do better.”

Gabaldon was quick to spread praise, pointing out that the ISO, or Insurance Services Office fire score, is not just a rating for the fire department.

“It’s essentially all village services,” he emphasized. “It’s us. It’s Valencia County dispatch center. Everything gets audited, and that’s what puts it in that number. It’s a lot of people doing the right thing to continue to get better.

“I would love to sit here and tell you, as a fire chief, that it’s all because of the fire department, but it’s everybody,” he said.

Gabaldon said the department is “fairly young,” with three members just off their probation period within the year and promotions of engineers and lieutenants recently. He said movement has led to a “snowball effect” of new positions with six new staff members and four additional staff overall after a few departures.

While some department members live in Albuquerque, a good number live in the Los Lunas and surrounding areas and are committed to being part of the community.

“They spend a lot of time getting to know our community and knowing what our community is about,” he said, “and they become community members. Those that were even from here got to see different sides of the community, you know. These guys really pride themselves on being community members.”

With growth comes retention, which Gabaldon said LLFD has been doing “pretty good with retention right now” after a challenging few years of holding on to staff and firefighters. He said the department is always in competition with other metro area departments for personnel, but he said LLFD is holding its own and pointed out that the village is working on a pay study to aid retention.

“There’s raises in the neighboring department ... it’s going to happen,” he said of staff leaving. “We’re always going to have someone that’s going to leave ... but the village tries to continue to do better. So we’re trying to stay up with it and make sure that we have some of that retention and keep some of that continuity of our care. The village has done a great job with that, and they continue to do that every day.”

While the recent Desert Willow Complex Fire was a challenge for the entire community, Gabaldon said he felt entire village government came through with flying colors, emphasizing the importance of a community-wide response, not just first responders.

“The important thing we learned from that event is that it takes a community to respond the way we responded,” Gabaldon said. “It was those from not only the victims, but our surrounding community members, doing what they did through the evacuations, staying away from the area. We had off-duty firefighters driving in from out-of-town — even people who were on vacation, to assist.”

The coordination among various village departments, neighboring fire districts and state entities was crucial for success, he said.

“It was a combination, a combination of things that made it work — relationships with the state that the county has, with them to be able to get the airplanes,” he said. “That’s something you don’t see often.

“None of that stuff happens overnight,” Gabaldon emphasized. “If you happened to be out there, you saw the law enforcement out there blocking streets, assisting the public. Neighbors helping neighbors, and that’s what I’m getting at. There were so many different people helping. It was everybody. It was an entire response from the entire community.”