While watching the flames leap up from the Chimneys condominium during October’s fatal fire, former deputy chief of the Bellevue Fire Department Marty LaFave was in awe. But not at the disaster, the likes of which he has seen many times during his 36-year career as a firefighter.

“I really got to see how far the [fire] department had matured. The crews intuitively knew the priorities, the tactics to use. I was in awe of the multitude of fire attacks and window rescues they were mounting… It was a really well-orchestrated effort to try and save people,” he said.

After nearly four decades with the department, LaFave, 55, is passing the torch. Having helped the department start several programs and partnerships and doing nearly every job offered — including working as a community liaison, paramedic and battalion chief — he retired as a fire crew mentor and teacher last week to become a student of the world.

“The department is full of people who lean forward. A lot of the firefighters actually teach me how to teach them… I have faith that the people that we’ve hired can figure out how to do it so much better than I,” he said of the department’s future.

LaFave grew up with the Bellevue Fire Department. He started his career at the Parkland Fire Department in Pierce County before moving to Bellevue at age 19.

“I never wanted to do anything else. I trusted my intuition at that young age and never questioned it,” he said.

At that time, the young department had just four stations and was largely staffed with volunteers. Then at the early stages of their continuing partnership with Overlake Medical Center, LaFave and other medics used to get called into the hospital to start IVs, he said.

As a paramedic, he was with the department when they became the second paramedic program in King County. County residents experiencing cardiac arrest now have a better chance of survival than anywhere else in the world due to fast medical response times.

The cherry on LaFave’s cake was when he was reunited with one of the first lives he helped save as a paramedic — a breech baby who faced a less than five percent chance of survival. Thirty years later, Mike Lam was so inspired by the circumstances of his birth that he became a paramedic and still keeps in touch with LaFave.

LaFave also helped the department develop its approach to mass casualty situations and high rise fires. When he first joined the department, the mass casualty scenario fire department trained for involved school bus crashes. Now, the biggest concern in the years to come is the use of fire as a terrorist weapon.

Following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the department began assessing a fire departments role in a mass casualty event. But less than a decade later, LaFave would see the aftermath firsthand.

LaFave and other Washington firefighters spent two weeks assisting crews at Ground Zero after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He described the long days spent maneuvering through the smoldering wreckage of the twin towers, only to emerge from the enclosed site each day to be startled by the bustle of life in downtown Manhattan as a surreal experience.

In 2008, the department also pushed for active shooter training so that they can immediately enter a building and assist victims in the event of a mass shooting.

Over the last few years, the firefighters LaFave was once teaching have been impressing him with their ideas and leadership. They started introducing new technology and strategies that will help modern day crews battle fires, including the use of iPads and digital records to asses a building’s layout and structure while on the way to a fire.

“It has changed a lot, but the culture of the department hadn’t changed… They set a high bar, and I’m humbled that I’ve gotten to work alongside this group,” LaFave said.

LaFave plans on traveling the United States and Canada before leading European tours for Americans. He won’t truly leave the department behind, however, as he will continue to live blocks away from department headquarters in Downtown Bellevue.

“It went by way too fast,” he said. “I like to say that I had a 36-year college education at one heck of a campus, and now I’m going to take the lessons I’ve learned out into the world. Today is just my graduation day.”