Warrenville Fire Protection District Chief Andrew Dina, left, and Lisle-Woodridge Fire District Chief Keith Krestan both received awards during the 2024 Illinois Fire Service Combined Conference.
A statewide group has honored two fire chiefs from DuPage County.
The Illinois Fire Chiefs Association named Warrenville Fire Protection District Chief Andrew Dina chief of the year for combination fire departments with full-time and paid-on-call personnel.
Meanwhile, Lisle-Woodridge Fire District Chief Keith Krestan was named chief of the year for career departments staffed with full-time personnel.
Dina and Krestan earned the awards on Sept. 17 during the 2024 Illinois Fire Service Combined Conference in Peoria.
“This is a huge one,” said Dina, 60, who lives in Warrenville with his wife, Jeannie. Two of their three sons are firefighters, one in Naperville and the other in Chicago.
Andrew Dina, who has spent decades in the fire service, worked with the Naperville Fire Department before coming to the Warrenville department in April 2019. He succeeded retired Warrenville Chief Dennis Rogers in September 2020.
Dina currently serves as president of the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association of Illinois. He’s also president of MABAS 16, a local division of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System. Krestan sits on the MABAS 16 executive board.
Dina said the most exciting part of being recognized by the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association was seeing Krestan win an award.
“It’s a big year for DuPage County and for MABAS 16,” Dina said.
Dina is chair of the Emergency Telephone System Board of DuPage policy committee and a mentor and instructor with the Firefighter Cancer Support Network. He also teaches cancer prevention and awareness to academy classes at the Illinois Fire Service Institute in Champaign.
“At the risk of sounding corny, I like to help people. I love to help people, and I always try to make the job better for the next person,” Dina said.
Krestan, 57, has lived in Lisle for nearly 30 years. He has two children with his wife, Kim, a paraprofessional at Lisle Elementary School.
“This recognition is an individual award, but it’s really a recognition of the organization as a whole and the people and the services that we provide,” Keith Krestan said.
“Firemen typically don’t like awards and recognition, things like that, but it’s nice when it happens. But it truly is a reflection of the organization — and not the individual.”
Serving as a firefighter is all Krestan has wanted to do since boyhood, he said.
Krestan has been with the Lisle-Woodridge Fire District since 1990. He was named fire chief in 2017, becoming the first in district history to rise through the ranks to head the department.
“I’ve been the newest guy and the chief, which gives you a little bit of credibility,” he said.
A former president of the DuPage County Fire Chiefs Association, Krestan is an Area 3 representative on the board of the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association in addition to his post on the MABAS 16 executive board.
Like Dina, he has no plan to retire anytime soon, only to continue to “make what for many people is their worst day a little bit better,” Krestan said.
“Retirement is walking away from something you love,” he said. “It’s never been a job. It’s just something I do. I get up in the morning, walk the dogs … and go to the firehouse. It’s family.”