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It’s not easy to be married to a firefighter. Whether you’re the wife or a husband of one, you know it can be tough to deal with emotionally. And if […]

This time, I’m doing something a little different. It’s been a tough fire season here in southern California and it’s not over. I’m helping out my friends up the road […]

How would you grade your most recent Incident Commander’s performance? Solid or…timid? Solid is an IC who has been trained and seasoned—and one more element: practiced. Timid is someone who […]

The way we used to train newbies, in lots of jobs, not just firefighting, could best be described as “tough love.” That’s being charitable. We were downright mean to them, […]

Recruiting has become a real problem at many volunteer fire departments. But what’s worse is when you do get someone to join, get them qualified, and then in a year […]

I just had Pete Van Dorpe on the show, talking about his article from 2015 titled, “Mounting an Intelligent Interior Attack.” Coincidentally, Nick Salameh, a previous guest on this show, […]

There is always an on-going discussion about how aggressive firefighters should be at structure fires. Inevitably, the argument gets into interior attacks vs. transitional. That discussion bypasses an important question, […]

On this, the 19th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America, I am re-running a great interview with Fire Chief Rick Lasky about the events of that day. It originally […]

How do you select a handline when you arrive at a fire? Do you have an all-purpose go-to that usually gets pulled? Some departments routinely pull the reel line. You […]

If you spend any time on Facebook, you’ve probably seen the videos posted by Fire Department Chronicles. If you haven’t, you need to. Go there right now and look them […]