Station 1902

[00:13] Chief Ed Mann: Welcome to another station 1902 podcast. I'm your host Ed Mann, Director of Training and education for Providence Today. Our special guest is Frank Lieb, Managing Director at the First Responder center for Excellence and a retired FDNY Chief Officer. I was fortunate enough to meet Frank several years ago when we were traveling the country doing cancer risk reduction programs for the frce. There are two things I know about Frank. His passion for firefighter health and safety and his passion for great leadership. Chief, welcome to the show. Please tell our listeners more about your self and your career.

[00:57] Chief Frank Leeb: Thank you my friend. I appreciate you having me on the show and yeah, so 31 years in the FDNY began my career in 1992 but and throughout my career I worked in many different places around the city and my, the last three positions that I held were the Chief of the fire Academy, the chief of training and the Chief of Safety. I retired in June of 2024 and I'm also a 40 plus year member of the East Farmingdale Volunteer Fire Department on Long island where I currently still serve.

[01:35] Chief Ed Mann: So Chief, you mentioned you spent 31 years on the job with FDNY holding positions from firefighter to the Deputy Assistant Chief of Safety. What are some of the biggest changes you saw in the FDNY over your career?

[01:50] Chief Frank Leeb: I would say the biggest, the single biggest change that I've seen not just in the FDNY but in the entire fire service is the responsibilities of the firefighter. And as we've transitioned to an all hazards fire service. You know, when I came on a job in 1992, we were, we were firefighting department and my fire academy was, was only eight weeks long. I got on in October of 92, was out of the fire, was out back into the firehouse in time, you know, to work New Year's Eve. And then it wasn't until February of 1993. Keep in mind that we had the first bombing of the Trade center and that kind of began the transition to realizing that there's the fire service is going to become more and evolve and it became that all hazards department. So today what the, what the firefighter needs to know today is vastly increased since 1992.

[02:47] Chief Ed Mann: Which has certainly led to more, more specialized teams and more specialization. Wouldn't you agree?

[02:54] Chief Frank Leeb: Oh, absolutely. And that's what you, that's what you need right is, is these teams of, of individuals that specialize in this because sometimes it's hard to, to have a great proficiency in every single discipline. So as an example in the FDNY and even in the federal FEMA system, all of these different teams or people that are capable that have increased capabilities in certain things. In fdny, the rescues and the squad companies have advanced training and building collapse. And we have a hazmat unit as well that has training in there and all these different domains, high angle rescue, trench rescue. And then different companies have a lesser degree of training. And it's really set up in a pyramid, a hierarchy of training as you to even in a response matrix of who's coming depending on the severity of the incident. So it is vastly different in how it's set up today. And that, you know, while that began to be a consideration in 1993 with the World Trade center bombing, the FDNY recognized their need to expand that in 1998 when they formed the additional squad companies. Previous to 1998, the FDNY had two squad companies, squads 41 in the Bronx and squad one in Brooklyn. And then after that we had a more robust squad presence where they made an additional five companies. Today they added a sixth. So there's many more of them today than there were certainly in 1993 when there were only two.

[04:27] Chief Ed Mann: So just for our listeners, what's the, what's the New York City, the FDNY definition of a squad? What's, what is a squad company with the fdny?

[04:39] Chief Frank Leeb: Yeah, that's a good, that's a good question because certainly the definition changes depending where you go. So a squad company is an engine company that has, so it has hose, it has first and second do responsibilities and third do responsibilities. But it also has equipment to operate at technical rescue incidents, be it hazmat incident, confined space, heavy rescue incident, has her stools, all the different disciplines like that, similar to a rescue company in that regard. And geographically they respond to. I was in Squad 270 for just about five years and that was in South Queens, so we had all of South Queens. And in north queens was Squad 288. And we also had Rescue 4 as well. And the rescue, there's one in each borough in New York City. But I know they sometimes get confused as ambulances. Depending where you are. Rescuer squad can be considered an ambulance, but these are not. These are firefighting units. They respond to EMS and medical runs, but that's not the primary mission.

[05:42] Chief Ed Mann: Okay, so Chief, I know you also serve with a volunteer, as a volunteer with the East Farmingdale, New York Fire Department. Let's take a few minutes to talk about that experience.

[05:55] Chief Frank Leeb: Sure. Well, I've been around the fire service so I joined the fire service when I was 14 years old, but my brother, my older brother joined the fire department when I was 7. So all of my memories are. All of my childhood memories have some degree, to some degree involved the volunteer fire service. And the greatest, besides introducing me to the fdny, through the firefighters that I met there, I got to meet all of these individuals that were hardworking. Some of them had two, three jobs, and they still found time, amazingly, to volunteer their time to the community. I saw what leadership looks like my first glimpses, besides my parents, what leadership would look like, what teamwork looked like, what mentorship looked like. So all of that, all of those early experiences really help transform you into the person you are. And I think about, especially some of the early chiefs that I had. Joe Riley, Charlie Crimmy, Ken Nitley, Pat Walsh, Greg James, Charlie Crimmy. Like, these were some of the early chiefs that I had in my career, you know, and there's others, Tommy, Joseph and Gene Hiscock. And you think about all of their leadership lessons and how they impacted, influenced a young version of me. And even seeing and being exposed to the different career paths that people take. Who's a. Who becomes a doctor, who's a. Who's a firefighter, who's a police officer, who's a letter carrier for the U.S. postal Service. All these different career paths that you get to see and be exposed to as you're kind of figuring out what you want to do. But for me, being a firefighter was something that I've always wanted to do. As I mentioned, it's been in my. It's been in my family and in my blood since I'm seven years old.

[07:51] Chief Ed Mann: So, you know, along the same lines. Chief, I grew up. My dad was a volunteer firefighter in my hometown of Belfont. There were two volunteer fire stations in town. My dad belonged to the fire company and had blue fire trucks. The other fire station in town had red fire trucks. You had to be 21 to join my dad's fire company, the Undying Fire Company. You had to be 18 to join the Logan Fire Company. I was fortunate that the chiefs at both places allowed me to start hanging out and take classes. When I was 14, I was the first immediate member of my family to join the fire company in town, the Logan Fire Company that had red fire trucks, which caused one of my uncles to almost have a stroke because I joined the fire company in town and had red fire trucks. He just used to jokingly say, I'd rather be dead than red all the time when he would see me. So to your point, I saw a lot of the same things. And Even today at 65, I look back on some of the chiefs that I came across then and to. To this day, I know their names, I can hear things that they said in leadership positions, and it certainly helped me take the path that I took.

[09:09] Chief Frank Leeb: So, yeah, the volunteer fire service is an important part of my story and my journey to where I got to today. And I never forget. I never forget where I come from. I never forget where I got my beginnings, you know, and it made me even more appreciate my opportunity to not only be a volunteer firefighter, but to also become a career firefighter. And I think of, and. And I write about this in. In. In the Cornerstones of Leadership book about the early influences of. Of these mentors. And one story in particular is we were going to raise the bar of training. And the chiefs at the time when they did that, when they raised the bar, there was a lot of pushback, especially from some of the more senior members. Why do we need to train? You know, we're volunteers, all this. And they stuck to their guns because they knew that they were on the right side of this. And Ed, that was more than 30 years ago that they did that. And today we still use that same, you know, those, those increased standards are the bar, and no one complains about it. Everybody does the training. And you think about those little changes that leadership could make that are generational impacts. And to me, that has always stood out as an impactful moment to see these chiefs that knew that they were doing the right thing by increasing the training, which will decrease injuries and reduce their potential for injuries and getting killed in the line of duty. And they stuck to it because they knew what was right. And today, some of the younger firefighters, they have no idea how we got to this point where these standards are here. They just know that that's part of it. And when they join, they have to go through certain trainings and annual refresher trainings, and it's just part of what we do well.

[10:59] Chief Ed Mann: And that kind of leads me to my next question then. What motivate motivated you to write your book, the Cornerstones of Leadership on and off the Fire Ground?

[11:08] Chief Frank Leeb: So that's an interesting question, because I really never had a desire to write a book. It wasn't until Peter Matthews from Firehouse Magazine. He asked me to be the keynote speaker at Firehouse Expo in 2022. And he told me, he says, I just want it to be training and Leadership and you, you figure out the rest. I said, all right. At the time, I didn't think that there was a great need for, for talking about training in the fire service. And he, he, he knew better. He had his finger certainly more on the pulse of the national fire service than I did. And so I wrote this, I wrote out my keynote speech, I delivered it, and afterwards I had so many people telling me like, you got to put that into a book. You got to make that into a book. So I took what was, what was the, you know, I watched a speech a couple of times and then I chunked it into different chapters. And I decided with some, with some prodding from some of my friends, that, yeah, let me, let me see if I could make this into a, into a book. I had people sending me other books to say, hey, make it. It could be something like this. You know, Admiral McRaven has a couple of really good books, make your bed and Wisdom of the Bullfrog, both books that I had read. And I looked at them and said, wow. No, it's about a three or four hour read. My books are four, four and a half hour read. And the readability was important for me because I love books that I could get through in, you know, I don't have to commit a year to it. And I like when. To the point. I like when you have chapter takeaways. So I decided that I'm going to do it, but the goal is I have to have it done for the one year anniversary of, of the speech, which was a very daunting test to do that. I was able to accomplish that mostly because of my son. My son Justin was such an amazing help. He was the editor, the, you know, everything, the publicist of the book. It wouldn't have got done if it wasn't for him, but it was, you know, he would take full chapters and say, this doesn't belong in the book. It's too technical. So it's, it's leadership lessons from the fire service that are transferable to anybody, any organization, anybody looking for improvement with leadership. Just like Admiral McRaven, stories are military stories of leadership using military stories, minor using fire stories. The book is largely not about me. It's largely about my experiences that shaped who I am and my leadership. Talking about all of the people who have been instrumental teammates in training, teamwork and mentorship in my career, which is the crux of the book. And I tell you, it's been a humbling experience. The book's been out just over a Year now. And the success of it. Of it have exceeded any of my expectations. And the most importantly, the commentary and the feedback that I get from it has been incredibly humbling.

[14:14] Chief Ed Mann: So for our listeners, Chief, tell them where they can find your book. Yeah.

[14:20] Chief Frank Leeb: So you could. If you go on Amazon, you could find it there. If you Google it. It's also available on Barnes and Nobles and many other places. I know that the Getting Salty Experience, they sell it on their website as well. In fact, they have signed copies of it there. And then most of the places when I go and speak, I bring copies of it and they're available there and I personalize them if I see you in person. And if you. If you see me somewhere and you have a copy that you purchased from Amazon, certainly bring it with you and I'll be happy to. I'll be happy to sign it for you as well.

[14:56] Chief Ed Mann: Okay. Any chance that it'll become an audio book?

[15:00] Chief Frank Leeb: Oh, my goodness. It was easy to write it than it is to do an audio book. I've been working on it and I'm just about midway through, but so the. I'm trying to.

[15:10] Chief Ed Mann: I.

[15:10] Chief Frank Leeb: They're my stories, so I have to be the person who does the audio version of it.

[15:15] Chief Ed Mann: Gotcha.

[15:15] Chief Frank Leeb: But it has been a daunting task to do that. But I. I do hope that I'll have an audio book out in the near future. I'm not going to pin myself down to a date because it's already taken me way longer than I expected it to.

[15:28] Chief Ed Mann: Well, the only reason I ask is I do a lot of driving. That would be a perfect opportunity for me to listen to it. Obviously, I don't want to try to read it while I'm driving. So you mentioned.

[15:39] Chief Frank Leeb: Yeah, that would be. Yeah, as a safety chief, I could tell you that would be a. That would be a very bad idea. Yeah. And I listen to a lot of audiobooks as well. Probably about 60% of the, maybe even 70% of the books I read are audio books. I try and I try and read a lot. So I. I get it. It needs to be on audio. And. And it will at some point. I promise it will.

[16:02] Chief Ed Mann: So you. You mentioned this previously. When I googled your name, I found that you made significant contributions to Firehouse Magazine. Tell our listeners about that experience and how you became involved with that publication.

[16:16] Chief Frank Leeb: Well, so I write for many different publications. Actually, the first article I ever. I ever wrote was published in WMYF with New York Firefighters, an internal publication of the New York City Fire Department that You can subscribe to. And I have just about 30 articles to date written in that publication. So that was where I started. And I have been a student of the fire service since the very first day I joined the fire service. And I started writing about topics where I would have a response. And I didn't feel I knew everything I needed to know about it. And I know right now you're thinking, wow, 30 articles. You must be, you know, a dummy. But I figured if I didn't know about it, there was someone else that could learn about it as well. So I would research it and then write an article about my experience coupled with what I learned about. About that experience. So a fire in a place of worship that I had that was very successful. I had enough. I had enough knowledge to bring it to safely, a safe resolution, a safe conclusion. But I know more about it after doing research on it. And I've always read that magazine, Firehouse Magazine, Fire Engineering magazine, since I'm a kid. And the ability to be able to say, okay, I think I have enough valuable information that I can share with others, to me was valuable in a way to kind of give back. So Fire Engineering was then the second one that I published. And it seems that more recently I publish more often with Firehouse magazine than I do at any other publication. But I believe that all of them, and you can even add Crackle Magazine, one of the newer ones, to it, they are all valuable in our profession and we need them all to be successful because they all contribute valuably to the fire service. In fact, the. My latest book, which is 35, as you must know, that I wrote with Billy Goldfeder and 30 other. At least 30 other authors, is published by Fire Engineering Books. So they're all valuable in what we do. As you, as you certainly know that.

[18:26] Chief Ed Mann: So you mentioned something you can subscribe to. You want to repeat that, chief? With the articles for the fdny.

[18:37] Chief Frank Leeb: Yeah. So with the fdny, if you go on, I believe it's FDNY Pro. If you just Google WNYF fdny, it'll bring it up and you could get a print and digital subscription. It's very reasonably priced. It comes out a couple of times a year. It's a fantastic magazine. And when you subscribe, you get the digital subscription. You get like access to the past 10 years worth of worth it a magazine as well. And it's, it's, it's well worth it. Just like Firehouse, Fire Engineering, Crackle. They're all, you know, to me Those are for. Those are the big four that you should have in your library.

[19:15] Chief Ed Mann: Okay. So. And you mentioned that 30 fires you should know about. I was originally asked to write a chapter for that, and I deferred to a retired staff member from the state Fire academy, a good friend of mine, Pat Pauli, and ask him to write about the day Bob Gailardi, one of our adjunct instructors, was injured and two days later passed away from his injuries. That's one of the chapters in the book as well, so.

[19:45] Chief Frank Leeb: Yes, sir. Yes, that is chapter 24 in the book. It is. I tell you, every chapter in this book is amazing. And you know, you're mentioned in it. I know you're. I know from being your friend. I'm aware of the part that you played in it because we've had conversations on it. But it's a, it's a really powerful. It's a really powerful chapter in the book, as so many of them are. And it's, you know, it's so often it's how we handle adversity and tragedy afterwards that defines, that really defines the loss and the willingness to pass on the lessons learned is a strength of the fire service, and it is the strength of this book. I learned so much from the stories that are in this book. From different people I've gotten to meet family members, people with firsthand experiences, and most of the fires I was familiar with before we wrote the book. But afterwards, my degree of knowledge on these fires is so much greater and it's been a truly humbling experience. So like I said to you earlier, plenty times, I appreciate you and your leadership in your decades in the fire service.

[21:14] Chief Ed Mann: So you've had your fingers into a lot of things. So I want to move on. I want you to talk about your experience with the UI Firefighter Safety Research Institute on the study of coordinated attack and acquired structures.

[21:29] Chief Frank Leeb: Yeah. So the UL Fire Safety Research Institute does fantastic work and they have for decades. And the FDNY's involvement with them goes back to 1998 and the Vandalia Avenue fire, where the FDNY lost three firefighters in a wind driven fire in Brooklyn. And I have on the periphery. I had been involved with ul, paying attention to the research and for many, many years. And then when they were doing the Governor's Island Burns for the second time, I was a new battalion chief. I was also on our incident management team. I was safety trained. So every time they were looking for somebody to volunteer, some days they needed a battalion chief to go and I volunteered. Other days they Needed somebody from the incident management team. Maybe as I was an ops chief as well, I would go as ops. Then they needed somebody as a safety chief, I would go as a safety chief. However I could get there, I got there. So I attended I believe it was four days of the couple of weeks that they were there and then I started writing stuff about it. I posted videos about my experience and then I was asked to participate and help them with some further training that they were going to do. I wound up helping them teach with boot camps, fire dynamics boot camps and really got knowledgeable on fire behavior fire dynamics through that experience. I've heard Dan Majkowski or Steve Kerber talk doing lectures from my teaching and involving involvement with them well over 100 times. And it's like drinking from the fire hose of knowledge when you hear these guys talk about fire behavior, fire dynamics, all that stuff. So when they had I was able to apply for the coordinated ATT and CK and acquired structures and I was accepted to that. That was an amazing experience. And basically what they were doing is, was taking the results that they wanted to see how the results transferred from the, from the lab where they built structures to, to acquired structures. And they, the results were very transferable. And we did that in garden style apartments, we did that in private dwellings and we did that in taxpayer or strip mall fires. And the knowledge that we gained there and also being around the other tech panel members, many of whom I'm still good friends with and communicate regularly with, it's certainly one of the, one of the highlights of my fire service career was being part of that tech panel and being around you'd be go away to witness and participate in these burns for three or four days and you'd be talking about research and firefighting and tactics from all around the country constantly while you were there. And it was an amazing experience. And then seeing the results and seeing that you how you can have an impact no matter where you're from, no matter what size department, if you're into the job and into the game, you can make a difference. And I think that's the. Probably the biggest takeaway is when you see these apply the, the one that they. The new study that they have going on now had hundreds of applicants which is fantastic. It showed the fire service is engaged and certainly moving in a really good direction.

[24:44] Chief Ed Mann: So I was fortunate and unfortunate at the same time to meet Dan Madrikowski and Steve Kerber when they worked for NIST and after the incident at the state Fire Academy, Bob Gallardi we Had them come in and do testing in our burn building to verify what we thought we knew all along about basement fires in our training facility. And then when Steve moved along to FSRI with ul, I had him come to Pennsylvania and do a Fire Dynamics program that we probably had, I don't know, 200 people attend. And so we decided to put a program together. I'll never forget this. We put a program together so we could start teaching Fire D dynamics in Pennsylvania. And when we were doing the Train to Trainer in my capacity as the fire commissioner, when I introduced what we were going to do, I still remember one young instructor making the comment, this is a bunch of scientific nonsense. And I point blank told him if he didn't want to teach it, there's the door. Leave. If. Yeah, if FDNY was adopting and changing their policies as a result of what they were seeing from Fire Dynamics, it could certainly work in Pennsylvania. And if he didn't want to deliver that message, hit your feet, you can leave. So I think we've really covered your previous career and experiences. Let's move on to your role as a managing director of the frce. Tell us about the mission of the FRCE and the relationship with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

[26:32] Chief Frank Leeb: Yes. So I've been the managing director of the FRCE for just over six months. The First Respondent center for Excellence. We're an affiliate organization of the National Foreign Firefighter Foundation. And for us, like I like to say when I'm talking about it, our job is to make sure that your family never gets to meet the NFFF and the great work that they do. And you know, because when they get to. When the NFFF gets to meet you, like on Memorial Weekend, that, that means that. But somebody died in the line of duty. So that's, that's our job to make quality training programs to make sure that especially some of the stuff that we're seeing off the fire ground, such as cardiac and cancer. Right. That's two of our biggest types of programs that we. That we offer. And because. And they happen to be the number one and two killer of, of firefighters. So we've done a great job in the fire service of concentrating and learning the lessons on the fire ground that kill firefighters, which is why we see numbers hovering around historic lows in line of duty deaths. That's great. We should never take our offer that ball because that's what provides us to watch out and how to be better to make sure that we don't get firefighters killed on the fire ground, but we haven't had the same success yet. When we talk about the things that are killing us off of the fire ground, and cardiac and cancer are two of those. And what we're seeing now is behavioral health, mental health, suicide is another topic that we really have to do a better job. And these are like the blindside areas of the firefighter where we don't always see. We're not recognizing that because we're so focused on making sure that we're operating well on the fire ground, which we have to continue to do, as I mentioned, but we have to pay more attention to our health and wellness when we talk about fitness, our health and wellness, when we talk about nutrition, when we talk about getting sleep, when we talk about getting physicals, annual medicals, making sure that we understand what are the early symptoms of different type of cancers, specifically cancers that firefighters are more prone to getting that have a higher rate than the general population because early detection matters. So all of these different things and then different safety aspects so we could blend in. I like to say my favorite granola or my favorite trail mix is only like a bag of peanut MM that doesn't have the granola and all the other stuff. So when we talk about training firefighters, we need to find a way to blend all of these other topics that impact the fire ground directly. Because a physically fit, well trained firefighter is our greatest asset on the fire ground. So teaching them how to be physically fit, teaching them how to eat, teaching them the importance of sleep, teaching them about being physically fit to reduce your risk of cardiac incidents, all of those different things, what we need to do to prevent ourselves from getting occupational cancer, all those put into one into a training. And that's the class I give now regularly I do at, in fact, at FDIC next year. That's a class I'll be doing where we talk about we're going to combine it all. We're going to combine what we need to be doing on the fire ground and how that impacts us off the fire ground. So all of these different things are critically important. And when you blend them all together, they're really the blind side of the fire service because they're off the fire ground. Things that we're not considering because we're an all hazards department. And there's so much that we have to be concentrating on that these things seem to fall off the table. It's my job to make sure they don't fall off the table.

[30:29] Chief Ed Mann: So along those lines, to give you an example for our listeners of what The First Responder center for Excellence is up to two of your own board members, John Micklo and Barry Baliet. Two individuals I know very well just hosted a screening for first responders in at the Fox Chapel Fire Department this last Saturday. And the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center UPMC probably had 20 or 25 tables there where you could get different screenings done. To your point about early detection and I've seen where the FRCE has been all over the US in the last, even the last couple weeks doing some actual practical exercises, physical fitness exercises in fire departments across the country. So you're certainly hitting all of those, those five domains that the FRCE is supposed to be doing.

[31:30] Chief Frank Leeb: Yeah, and we're going to continue to do that. We have been everywhere. We just, we delivered four two day functional fitness workshops. One of those was at the fdny, one was in Gilbert, Arizona, one was in Urbana, Illinois and one was in Orange county at the Orange County Fire Authority. And we were just in North Carolina. We've been all over the place and so we deliver a lot of online training and that's what we want to continue to do. But if you go to, if you follow us on social media or go to our web webpage, you'll see some of the online trainings that we have. You'll also be able to request in person training. Some of our in person trainings have a cost related to that. We could also help you craft a grant to get that training. But you know, at the end of the day, our vision, my vision is to become a trusted destination for training and education and resources. That's what it's all about. And reach firefighters no matter where you are. Because rural firefighters and smaller departments, they don't always have the resources or the ability to access some of this training. So our online training is all no cost to firefighters. We just signed an agreement with a new learning management system, APS Advanced Problem Solutions out of California. They have been a fantastic partner as we're continuing to build new content for our learning management platform. So with the frce, the best is yet to come. We are building a strong team with a very deep bench and we're super excited about what we're going to continue to do to help first responders. They're not just firefighters, but all first responders, dispatchers, ems, which to me dispatchers in ems, they're already part of the fire service community. Right. So when we say fire, when I say the fire service, by default, I'm including them because they are part of our team, but also Even law enforcement. And because law enforcement has the majority of what they see is very similar to what the fire service sees. And just to circle back onto your point about the FRCE board members, we are so fortunate that we have board members on their first Respondent center for Excellence that are engaged and helping us strengthening what we're doing on our partnership. As I like to say, we're stronger together and our board members epitomize that, without a doubt. And we're working on partnerships with the University of Iowa, with the University of Pittsburgh. As you saw, we just partnered with them up in your neck of the woods. Those type of things is how we really become stronger together when we're able to leverage the time and talents of other people in other domains that that. That can be beneficial to us. Well, that's what we're looking to do. And that's what this partnership that we have with University of Iowa and University of Pittsburgh will be as we produce more mental health and wellness learning management modules for our system. So the best is yet to come. Stay tuned, follow us on social media and you will see, you'll get to know what we're doing right away and certainly visit our website.

[34:59] Chief Ed Mann: Well, and the links to the First Responder center for Excellence will be in the email when we send out the advertisement for your podcast. So everybody will have those links when we advertise going live with your podcast. So you already hit on the next two questions I had. You haven't been there very long. I know. One of your challenges so far has to be the fact that every time I look on see you on Facebook someplace else. You just told me earlier that you're going to be hitting six cities over the next couple of days. So I would imagine one of your challenges is trying to figure out how to pack the right clothes. Being in six different places in the US this time of the year.

[35:50] Chief Frank Leeb: Yeah, so that is certainly a challenge. But so the challenge is how do you reach all of the firefighters, career and volunteer. How do you find a way to reach all of. All of them, all of the dispatches, all of ems, all the people that need this training. Which is why we're concentrating on building our learning management platform. Because I visit fire departments and talk to firefighters that tell me we have to buy our own turnout gear, which is ridiculous. That in 2024 that jurisdictions have to have pancake breakfast car washes or spaghetti dinners to buy fire equipment. So if they're doing fundraisers for that, they don't have budgets for training necessarily. So our idea is we want to build a robust system to make sure that firefighters have the training that they need in all of these disciplines. As I mentioned, that really are our blindside because we need to make sure that we are educating our people upstream before, when they, when they, when they're newer in their careers for all of these challenges that we face. And quite frankly, that motivates me. It motivates our team. All of the people that we, that we've been bringing on to the team are motivated the same way. Whether it's, whether we're Talking about anger, M.E. john Micklow, Dina Alley, Tim Graves, Adam Zamzow. All of these people that we're bringing on, and there's so many more that I could, that I could name that, that are becoming part of, part of our team. Yourself. Right. You've been a part of the FRCE team for many years. That's where I was blessed to first get to meet you and, and know you. But stay tuned, the best is yet to come in regards to the FRCE and what we do and how we impact first responders everywhere.

[37:47] Chief Ed Mann: So, Chief, to your point, that's one of the reasons why Provident and Darren and the leadership team at Provident gave us the green light three years ago to start doing these podcasts and webinars so we can try, so I can bring subject matter experts like you, do a podcast, do a webinar and make it available online, get it recorded so people can watch it anytime they want to through our YouTube channel. And we've covered everything from the importance of data collection to lithium ion batteries and everything in between. And to your point, and I won't mention where I was, but three years ago I went to do an in person class. This particular fire department had 20 members, but only had five sets of turnout gear. They had received a brand new engine courtesy of the local government and nobody had been trained on its use yet. And it had been sitting in the station five or six months. That's, that's here in the United States. I'm not talking about a third world country.

[39:05] Chief Frank Leeb: Yeah. And that should be unacceptable. Right. And that, and that's kind of the point, which is why if we could take some of this training burden off of the plate of those locations, I see them, I hear them, I see it regularly. And the way we could help be part of that solution is offer you quality training in these online modules that are free of charge. When you complete them, you get, you get a certificate. But I want to, I do want to talk about provident Insurance for a second though, because I've been fortunate enough through you to meet the leadership team there. And they are. When we talk about fire service partners, right. There's a, there's a lot of people that like to say they're a partner with the fire service. A partnership means that everybody benefits from that. It doesn't mean it's a one sided. You know, some vendors think that they're a partner, but they don't. They're not really a partner. But Provident Insurance is truly a partner. They give back without any expectation. And, and I'm grateful that they enable you to, to do this training and other trainings and, and I thank them in this, in this public podcast. I've thanked them personally as well because we need to celebrate those type of people that support us the way they do. So thank you to Provident Ed. Thank you for having me on this show. And I, I look forward to the the next step is the webinar, which I look forward to.

[40:31] Chief Ed Mann: So, so as we draw near to the end of our podcast, do you have any closing words of wisdom for our listeners?

[40:38] Chief Frank Leeb: Chief stay learnable. 40 something years in the fire service. 42 years in the fire service. I still learn every single day. I make it a point to try and learn. Some days it's a recap of information I have. Other days I get some new information that I find to be incredibly valuable and is totally new. Stay learnable. Read something fire related every day. Learn something from everyone you meet. Sometimes you'll learn what not to do. But stay into the game. Love the job. It'll love you back.

[41:10] Chief Ed Mann: So you mentioned it earlier, Become a student. I used to challenge when I was a fire commissioner, go meet with young firefighters and I always ask them this question, are you going to be a student or a fan? And when I first asked, mentioned that to my son, he said, I don't understand. And he said, look, when you were younger, you could tell me who wore number 30 on the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1954 because he studied the Pittsburgh Steelers. He wasn't just a fan of the Steelers. And I used to challenge younger firefighters, become a student of this business. Don't become just a fan of this business. And you made this comment earlier in the podcast about being a student and I would offer the same challenge. I couldn't have said it better myself. Chief. So Chief, thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule. I'm hopeful our listeners have a better understanding of what a first Responder center for Excellence is in its mission. I'm certainly looking forward to our live webinar. To sign up for that webinar and our previously recorded webinars, visit the link in our Episode Notes. Share this podcast with your colleagues. You can send them our subscription link, also found in the Show Notes. Lastly, to our listeners, if you have any questions or need additional information or you have an idea for a future webinar or podcast, please email us at info provident is.com Station 1902 signing off. Until next time, stay safe for your family's sake.