Durham has named a northern Virginia firefighter and mayor its new fire chief.
Robert J. Zoldos II will start work Nov. 13, replacing interim Chief Chris Iannuzzi.
Zoldos is the former three-term mayor of the small town of Lovettsville, Virginia, which is in Loudoun County in northern Virginia. He has worked for the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department for 25 years and is the deputy chief of the department’s health, safety and wellness division. He has also led Fairfax County’s urban search and rescue team.
Zoldos was a rescue squad officer at the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
He was part of a 72-person team whose first assignment was to “shore up” the left side of the Pentagon where the hijacked airplane hit the building, before it collapsed.
“We did true search and rescue the first couple [of days] and then switched to recovery mode,” Zoldos said Tuesday in a phone interview.