Flags at Half Staff for Chief Dennis Powers

Both Tuolumne and Calaveras County Fire Districts and CalFire stations flags are at half staff in honor and memory of Chief Dennis Powers.

Chief Dennis Powers lost his fight with cancer on Wednesday evening, 4-13-11, at approximately 11:30 pm. Choosing to spend his last hours with his family, Dennis was transported from a San Francisco hospital to Copperopolis in the early evening hours of 4-13-11. Upon his arrival at the county line he was greeted with a massive display of fire aparatus and personnel from multiple towns, cities, and districts within Calaveras County and Tuolumne County, all there to honor a great man coming home.

Dennis became a volunteer firefighter in 1970 joining some of his friends at the Copperopolis Fire Protection District. By August 1974 the sitting board unanimously appointed Dennis as Chief. Though his promotion corresponded with the building of a new fire station, station #1 on Main Street, it was not near completion and Dennis would drive the cumbersome fire engine to his home every evening where, if needed, he would respond to calls received and fielded by his wife Donna on the family phone. Donna would activiate a "volunteer phone tree" thereby norifying the other volunteers of the emergency and the location.

After committing 33 years to the Copperopolis Fire Protection District, Dennis retired in 2007.

Retirement was not in Dennis' blood and he quickly found himself volunteering at Murphy's Fire, where he quickly became well known and well loved, promoting to Batttalion Chief, creating yet another family unit.

Dennis was known not only for his creation of a family environment within the departments he served, his love of community, and his fun loving spirit, but also for his brilliant yet short lived acting career in the CFPD's yearly hilarious melodrama’s directed by Linda Beck.

By, Charity Maness