- December 27, 2024
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Chris Cottle wears many hats inside the Palm Coast Fire Department.
Besides being a driver engineer, he is the department’s chaplain. He is also a mentor to new drivers. He is on the department’s Confined Space Team and is the Technical Rescue Training lead for the department’s B shift.
The hats don’t always fit together so well. As the department’s chaplain, his job is to provide comfort. As a mentor, sometimes he has to be a little harsh.
(Drive Engineer) Cottle has served this community for over 20 years. Not only serving as our department chaplin, but having a huge role in our department’s mental health care. He stays in the background most of the time but deserves the light as much as anyone. He remains an instructor for the department and helped design the Driver Engineer Mentorship that establishes a base for all of our future drivers and is often called upon by other neighboring departments to test and evaluate their upcoming drivers. He shows leadership, in and out of uniform and I am happy to call him a friend.
— PCFD Lt. JOSEPH FAJARDO, 2024 Standing O
“When I’m a mentor, sometimes I’ve got to be harsh to get people to snap in line. As the chaplain, I’ve got to be the spiritual lighthouse,” Cottle said. “They’re almost like opposites. Trying to be the two things for the same person is sometimes difficult.”
He handles all his roles with aplomb and with little fanfare, his lieutenant and his chaplain facilitator say.
“He stays in the background most of the time but deserves the light as much as anyone,” said Lt. Joseph Fajardo, who nominated Cottle for a Standing O.
“He is very passionate about being there for people, which drives the chaplain program,” said Jennifer Fiveash, the department’s battalian chief for training and the facilitator for the chaplain program. “He’s very passionate about being there for others in all of his roles, down to being a dad and a husband.”
As chaplain, Cottle works hand in hand with the department’s Peer Support Team, led by Lt. Eric Robinson, to help the department’s firefighters deal with personal difficulties.
“I've been focusing primarily on mental and spiritual well-being,” Cottle said. “The suicide rate in the fire service (nationally) is catastrophic. It’s been getting worse over the last 10 years, and nobody can really put their finger on why.”
According to a 2018 report from the Ruderman Family Foundation, police and firefighters are at a heightened risk for depression, PTSD and suicide, and police and firefighters are more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty.
“We unfortunately have had several attempts and several successful suicides in in our department,” Cottle said. “So it's trying to figure out how we can best serve our members when they're in that crisis, and get rid of the stigma of weakness of asking for help. You know, the macho gung-ho stuff, getting rid of all of that and making it where it's a normal everyday thing to be like, ‘Dude, I am struggling with X, Y or Z and I need some help.’”
He is very passionate about being there for people, which drives the chaplain program.
— JENNIFER FIVEASH, PCFD battalion chief
Cottle and the department’s peer support team stop by the different stations delivering cups of coffee and visiting with the firefighters.
“They come by just to say hi, but they’re stopping by to check on them,” Fiveash said. “They establish relationships, because people are more willing to talk to somebody they have a relationship with. Our firefighters are overwhelmed by the amount of calls they get, the kind of calls, their lack of sleep. Chris makes it his personal responsibility to not miss signs.”
Cottle and his wife, Libby, moved here in 2001 from the Keys where Cottle had managed a marina. In 2002, on Libby’s suggestion, he joined the PCFD as a volunteer firefighter. He was offered a career position two years later.
In 2019, he became the department’s first chaplain. He had been approached by a member of the city’s safety team about designing a chaplain program. Cottle spoke to other fire department chaplains, attended conferences and designed a program that would be led a by a community clergy member.
Jerry Forte, the department chief at the time, added an addendum to the job description, “or otherwise appointed by the fire chief,” and named Cottle the new chaplain.
Although he is not a member of the clergy, Cottle has a Southern Baptist background. His father became a pastor after retiring from the Navy. For spiritual guidance, Cottle directs members to clergy aligned with their beliefs. Members of the department can receive counseling through the Employee Assistance Program. But changing perceptions can be an uphill battle.
“We’re trying to get our people to let their guard down enough to where they can trust the peer support program, they can trust the chaplaincy program,” Cottle said. “We didn't have that system coming up, and so it was the suck-it- up-buttercup mentality. (Firefighters) are fixers, and a lot of us have the savior mentality.”
About 20 years ago, Cottle said, he went through a deep dark depression himself where he “contemplated suicide on a regular basis” until finally, after a hard conversation with a friend, he sought therapy.
Cottle is now looking into starting a suicide awareness course for fire service.
“I'm learning. I'm going to conferences. I'm going to classes, I'm talking with psychologists and counselors to get information so that I can put it all together,” he said.
He is working closely with chaplains in other fire departments around the state. And he’s gotten on a regular Zoom call with fire chaplains nationally.
“We all kind of work together and we’ll say, ‘this is working for us, you can try it.’ We’re trying to fix a broken system, but we don’t really know how it’s broken. So it’s all hands on deck.”
