On the eve of his 30th birthday, Wilmette Fire Chief James Dominik, then a young lieutenant in the department, feared that he would not live to see the next day as he and his partner struggled to escape a burning high-rise building.
Dominik said he and his partner managed to locate two of the remaining three occupants in the burning building that January night in 1993. As they tried to make their way out, his partner was running out of air, entangled in wires and straining to get free. Dominik said he managed to pull him out and the two escaped with their lives.
“It was training for those worst case scenarios that was so very important to our survival,” Dominik said. The incident sent Dominik on a crusade to provide the fire department with the very best training available, a hallmark of his career.
The story comes as Domink prepares to retire Jan. 2, after a 29-year career in the village’s fire department. A Golf resident and village trustee, Dominik is a Wilmette native and third generation firefighter. His father, grandfather and uncle were all members of the Wilmette Fire Department before him.
Dominik joined the department in 1985 at age 21 as a firefighter paramedic. He rose steadily through the ranks until he became chief in 2006.
“To me it was the most noble profession,” Dominik said. As a young man he had the opportunity to work in other places, Dominik said, but he wanted to give back to the community that he had grown up in.
Much has changed since he first joined the department, Dominik said. For one, there are fewer fires today than there were three decades ago, but the volume of calls the department receives has increased.
Firefighters now are more like “life safety services professionals,” he said, and the types of emergency related calls received by fire departments require a slew of skills.
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Dominik’s many accomplishments include working with the Northeastern Illinois Public Safety Training Academy, an intergovernmental agency that provides state-of-the-art public training facilities to fire protection districts, municipalities and other organizations in the Chicago metropolitan area, village staff said. Dominik now serves as vice president of NIPSTA and has been instrumental in creating several facilities for training emergency and fire personnel.
Dominik also takes credit for retaining the department’s accreditation through the Center for Fire Accreditation International, said village manager Timothy Frenzer.
“He was one of the leaders who originally helped the fire department obtain it’s international accreditation,” Frenzer said. The accreditation is something “very few fire departments achieve,” he added.
Under Dominik’s leadership, the department improved its Insurance Services Officer rating — ultimately saving money for the village — and implemented a new residential sprinkler ordinance and high-rise sprinkler compliance plan.
And for his continuous work in fire prevention, Dominik received the Achievement Award from the Fire Inspectors Association in 2010.
Frenzer, who has known Dominik since the early 1990s, said that the chief has been on the “front edge of all the new developments in fire service.”
Other village leaders expressed profuse praise for Dominik’s accomplishments in the department.
“When I think of (Dominik), I just think of professionalism,” said village board president Bob Bielinski. “We have some of the best trained firefighters around. It’s really a reflection on (Dominik’s) leadership of the department over the years.”
But at age 50, Dominik said it’s time for him to retire to spend more time with his wife and daughter, 8. He also plans to volunteer and further pursue his hobby of flying planes.
Plus, he said, it’s time for someone else to take over the mantle.
“I’ve trained and mentored all these people below me and they’re all ready,” Dominik said.
The village did not have to look far to find a replacement. Deputy Chief Mike McGreal will assume the role of fire chief on Jan. 2 next year.
At his official appointment to the position during a recent village board meeting, McGreal called Dominik “one of the best bosses I’ve ever had.”
As he prepares to leave the department, Dominik has no regrets about his chosen career path.
“When I started this job, bottom of heart, I thought it was the greatest job in the world,” Dominik said. “I still think it’s the greatest job in the world 29 years later.”