Bloomington is about to get a new fire chief, which hasn't happened since 1986. Ulie Seal, 69, retires Nov. 6 after more than 50 years with the Bloomington Fire Department. He spent 40 of those years as its chief.
Seal joined in June 1976 as a paid, on-call firefighter, a year after he graduated from Kennedy High School. He said someone "had to talk me into it a bit, because I was going to school at the time, and I felt like I was pretty saturated." The rest of his schedule didn't get any lighter. Starting in 1978 he was also a licensed police officer with the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, and in 1980 he went to work full-time for the Minneapolis Fire Department. He ran Bloomington's department on top of all that from 1986 until early 2007, when he became the city's first full-time fire chief.
As for why now: "The older you get, the more aware you become that your mind thinks you're younger than your body knows," Seal said. Mayor Tim Busse called him "a great leader and firefighter with a good heart."
Seal is leaving partway through a big change at the department. In June, he and Deputy Chief Jay Forster brought the City Council a long-term plan that moves the department to a mix of full-time and part-time firefighters. The city says the department answered more than 11,700 calls in 2025, about 70% of them medical emergencies, and that calls were up another 4% through mid-2026. The goal is for the first fire unit to arrive within 7 minutes and 30 seconds, 90% of the time. Right now the average is about 9 minutes, and sometimes longer when the department is short-staffed. The plan also includes rebuilding Fire Station 4 at 4201 W. 84th St., work on 3 more stations, and consistent staffing at all 6 stations in the city.
Forster, who helped write that plan, will be interim chief after Seal leaves. The city hasn't announced how it will hire a permanent chief yet. If you want to look back first, there's a video about Seal's career on YouTube.
