Ferndale honors longtime Fire Chief Rich Leonardo's community service

Rich Leonardo spent decades at the center of Ferndale’s volunteer firehouse, rising from Fireman of the Year in 1990 to assistant chief by 2001 and later serving two years as president of the Humboldt County Fire Chiefs Association. He died April 30, 2026, just three days before his 70th birthday, leaving behind a record that stretched from the engine bay to the broader county fire service.

In Ferndale, where the volunteer department has been averaging more than 200 fire and medical calls a year in recent years, that kind of continuity matters. The Ferndale Volunteer Fire Department, founded in 1897, serves the city and the surrounding rural area, where response times and local familiarity can shape outcomes in emergencies. Leonardo’s long progression through the department’s ranks marked him as one of the people residents could count on when a call came in from town or from the roads and ranches outside it.

His service was visible in the department’s own history. He was named Fireman of the Year in 1990, served as captain of Company 1 during the 1990s and was listed as assistant chief in 2001 alongside Dennis Del Biaggio as chief and Tom Ford as another assistant chief. That span of service showed a steady climb through the organization, one that reflected both experience and trust inside a department that has long depended on volunteers to keep Ferndale protected.

Leonardo was born May 3, 1956, to Tony and Gerry Leonardo of Ferndale. His death came just before a milestone birthday that would have marked 70 years of life in the same community where he built his career and reputation. In a town where the fire department is also part of civic life, his influence reached beyond alarms and apparatus.

The department’s public role has included two yearly blood donation days, free Fourth of July rides for children on fire engines, decorating the town Christmas tree and occasional CPR and fire-extinguisher training for the community. Those events helped make the firehouse one of Ferndale’s most familiar institutions, and Leonardo’s career became part of that tradition.

For Ferndale, Leonardo represented more than one man in one job. He stood for the kind of long-serving local leadership that keeps a rural town’s emergency response, volunteer recruitment and public trust intact.