LAPLACE — The St. John the Baptist Parish Fire Department was left reeling last week following the death of one of its own.

St. John District Chief Spencer Chauvin, 36, was killed the morning of Aug. 28 when he was struck by a bus while working a crash scene on Interstate 10. His funeral, filled with pomp and tradition, was held Thursday.

He is the 46th Louisiana firefighter to die in the line of duty, but the first for St. John Parish.

Described by everyone who knew him as a generous, selfless man, Chauvin will be sorely missed professionally and personally by all who knew him.

“He was the guy to fix things, to make it better,” said St. John Fire Chief Cain Dufrene. “He was always finding new ways, new techniques, attending classes. He set up the first EMT class for our department. He set that up and ran it.”

Chauvin’s duties as District Chief were to supervise all the men and women on his shift, Dufrene said.

“He always knew the weather,” said Daniel Perret, a St. John fire fighter and a longtime friend of Chauvin’s. “You never had to watch the weather because he always knew and could tell you what the weather was going to do.”

Chauvin also loved his fire trucks.

“He was like a kid in a candy store in those trucks,” said another friend, Rick Sanchez. “He’d get in that truck and it was like he was in another world.”

Now the men and women who worked with Chauvin will have to pick up and carry on without him. That may not be easy.

It’s the State Fire Marshal’s job to ensure that the family gets everything it needs, from benefits and insurance to counseling, but also that the members of the department get what they need.

State Fire Marshall Butch Browning said it’s important that the St. John department also gets physical help.

Other departments from around the state made their way to St. John Parish last week to help fill in for the mourning men and women. While the Parish was holding Chauvin’s funeral services, the Baton Rouge Police Department covered their shifts — including a wreck on the same stretch of highway where Chauvin was killed.

“When people grieve, they either clam up or they start rationalizing with half-truths,” Browning said. “There are some people who really just need to have a conversation. We offer them what we call ‘peer support.’ It’s not counseling, per se. They just need to know that there are people there for them if they need it.”

Said Perret: “We have more support than we know what to do with.”

For some, those conversations may include questions about continuing in such a dangerous line of work.

There were 68 firefighter deaths in the United States in 2015, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

“You think about it,” Perret said. “There’s not a day that goes by that you don’t think about it.”

But most first responders won’t stop doing what they do.

“This is what I was born to do,” said Sanchez, a former St. John deputy now working for the Independence Police Department. “It’s a calling from above. This is what I do. This is the oath I took. As a first responder you know you’re taking chances every day. I think this was a freak accident that happened. I think Spencer would say the same thing.”

Sanchez and Perret said Chauvin’s legacy will continue.

“Everything you do now, from that day on the bridge, it will be used as a way to do things better,” Perret said. “Even his death will be something we learn from. There was nothing in the fire department that he didn’t find a way to do better. We might not know it now. It might be a year from now, but something is going to change from this.”