By David Slade
Charleston Post and Courier

Photo courtesy of Montgomery County

CHARLESTON, SC — Thomas Carr, the man nominated by Mayor Joe Riley to take command of the Charleston Fire Department and lead it out of the crisis that began with the tragic Sofa Super Store fire, was confirmed by City Council on Tuesday night.

Carr, 54, is chief of the Montgomery County (Md.) Fire and Rescue Service, a department roughly 10 times the size of Charleston's.

He will retire from that department after a 30-year career, and is expected to report for duty in Charleston in November.

Carr was chosen after a national search that attracted 141 applicants, and was among seven finalists who went through a grueling interview process last month in Charleston, where they were also introduced to City Council members and neighborhood leaders.

"All of the gentlemen were more than qualified," said Councilman Aubry Alexander, who was the only member of council to comment before the confirmation vote. "I don't think we could have made a wrong selection."

Carr's confirmation was such a foregone conclusion that the vote was accidentally left off the council agenda. When the agenda was amended to allow for the vote, Carr was quickly and unanimously confirmed, after comments by Riley and Alexander.

Riley said he saw Carr on Sunday at the 27th annual National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Service in Emmitsburg, Md., where the nine Charleston firefighters killed in the Sofa Super Store fire were among those honored.

 "Essentially, every person I talked to wanted to tell me how glad they were that Chief Carr is coming to Charles ton,and what a wonderful leader he is," Riley said.

Carr, who was not at the City Council meeting, will replace Acting Fire Chief Ronald Classen. Classen, who plans to retire, took over when longtime Chief Rusty Thomas retired a year after the sofa store fire.

The fire on Savannah Highway exposed a number of problems in the Charleston Fire Department, from questionable procedures to problems with equipment.

The men now known as the Charleston Nine died after a loading dock trash fire quickly got out of hand and engulfed the store.

Reports investigating what happened at the sofa store found, among other things, that commanders at the scene were unsure how many firefighters were in the building or where they were, and the firefighter inside the building struggled with limited water supplies.

The city has been implementing costly, sweeping recommendations from a team of fire service professionals who were hired as consultants, from expensive purchases of new equipment to new training procedures.

"I think it's too early to say if those were Band-Aids or permanent solutions," Carr said last week, during an interview after his nomination was announced.