READING, Pa. – We met up with Reading Fire Chief James Stoudt at one of his favorite places in the city, the Firefighters Museum on South Fifth Street.<\/p>\n
The building used to be the Liberty Fire Station, just steps away from where Stoudt grew up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was born and raised two doors away here on Fifth Street,\u201d Stoudt said. \u201cJust being a firehouse kid, always over here having lunch with my father and hanging out with the members.\u201d<\/p>\n
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James Stoudt was officially sworn in as Reading’s fire chief on May 9, 2022.<\/p>\n
Jack Reinhard | 69 News<\/p>\n
Stoudt joined the Reading Fire Department in 1993 and took over as Fire Chief in 2022, following his cousin, William Stoudt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to be a firefighter in Reading,\u201d he said. \u201cNever thought in a million years that I would ever become and retire as the fire chief. It never even crossed my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stoudt says some of the toughest calls weren\u2019t always the biggest fires, but the ones that threatened entire blocks of homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have fires in row homes and you get there and you\u2019re looking at fire coming out of two or three windows on the second or third floor,\u201d he said, \u201cand you\u2019re looking at the houses next to it and five or six houses down, that\u2019s when it becomes a real challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, as he prepares to retire, Stoudt says he\u2019s not stepping away completely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll still continue to work part-time at the Berks County Fire Training Center,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve got a list of stuff to get done around the house\u2026 and I want to be able to do a little bit more traveling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stoudt is being honored for his service during Monday\u2019s Reading City Council meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – We met up with Reading Fire Chief James Stoudt at one of his favorite places…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[52474,11615,52472,6423,52473,28,736,128,1095,130,129,6426,52471],"class_list":{"0":"post-109523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county-fire-training-center","9":"tag-fire-chief","10":"tag-firefighters-museum","11":"tag-james-stoudt","12":"tag-liberty-fire-station","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-reading","15":"tag-reading-city","16":"tag-reading-city-council","17":"tag-reading-city-headlines","18":"tag-reading-city-news","19":"tag-reading-fire-department","20":"tag-william-stoudt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}