Station 1902

[00:02] Speaker A: A warm central Pennsylvania welcome to our station 1902 podcast.

[00:07] I'm your host, Ed Mann, director of training and education for Providence.

[00:12] This podcast and our live monthly webinars are just one way Providence gives back to those who serve our communities.

[00:19] Today I have the pleasure and I'll also add the honor of talking to Steve Hirsch, the chairman of the National Volunteer Fire Council,

[00:28] a volunteer firefighter, and an attorney at law.

[00:32] Steve, welcome to the show.

[00:35] I'm really excited to finally be able to connect with you.

[00:38] Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

[00:41] Sure.

[00:41] Speaker B: And, Ed, I sure appreciate you putting the firefighter up front of the lawyer part of it, because I identify more as a firefighter than I maybe do as a lawyer.

[00:50] I have, you know, I have to have a job, a day job, though, that supports my volunteer habit.

[00:56] So my name is Steve Hirsch, and I guess if you want to know a little bit about me,

[01:03] my dad started the rural fire district in 1963, and I was born the year before that.

[01:09] So, like a lot of our listeners, yourself included,

[01:12] grew up in the fire station. It's part of my DNA.

[01:16] They wouldn't let me handle a hose for several years after I was born. But so, you know, it's been a family event.

[01:23] And then later on doing this job on my own,

[01:32] I eventually got involved in our State Firefighters Association 26 years ago and served as president and first vice president and secretary and treasurer. Still serve as treasurer and my own fire company.

[01:44] We're located in Sheridan County, Kansas.

[01:48] That's 900 square miles. We're the only fire department in 900 square miles and cover the entire county. We have about 2,500 people in the entire county. So it's a small county.

[02:00] It's very rural, very remote, out in the northwest part of Kansas,

[02:04] but very, very proud of the men and women that serve on my fire department and the great job that they do well.

[02:12] Speaker A: So, Steve, there's one thing we both have in common. You mentioned it. We both grew up around a firehouse because of our fathers.

[02:19] What's one of your fondest memories of those days?

[02:24] Speaker B: Oh, you know,

[02:25] I mean, I spent a lot of time in the firehouse, sitting in the seat of the fire truck and pretending that I was going to fires. You know, the things that I think today that stand out is that,

[02:40] you know, the first person to the fire station never got to go on the call because their job was to take their finger and blow the town siren from the fire station,

[02:51] that the only gear that they had at the time was aluminized.

[02:55] Gear that came from some military installation somewhere.

[03:00] The fact that it was many, many years into that gig before they ever had SCBAs and really had very little training. But you know,

[03:10] one of the things that, I guess one of my memories I can remember, I was probably about,

[03:15] I'm going to say 10 years old,

[03:19] happened to be out with my dad and got a call and so I went with my dad to the fire scene.

[03:25] It was a two story farmhouse that had got struck by lightning.

[03:29] It wasn't all that far from town, it was a couple miles from town.

[03:33] But even though I think by that time they had scba,

[03:39] nobody really was trained to wear them and they didn't have proper protective gear.

[03:44] It was pretty obvious. Balloon frame construction house.

[03:47] It was pretty obvious that house was going to burn the ground. And the thing that strikes out into my memory is that entire community, fire department and civilians who emptied that house of every drawer, every piece of furniture,

[04:02] every piece of silverware,

[04:04] every chair,

[04:06] and it was all setting out on the lawn. The house was gone by later that night. But these people had everything they needed to, you know, to get and get a new house and be able to move in and pick up life.

[04:19] And I guess, you know, sometimes we think that,

[04:23] you know, we're so good that we can save properties and a lot of people are, but,

[04:30] you know, that community came together and did something for that family that was just amazing. I still, it's like I was standing in that yard yesterday.

[04:43] Speaker A: Well, that, that is pretty memorable.

[04:46] It's,

[04:47] you know, as you said a lot of times, you know, we all think,

[04:51] and you know, our primary mission is to put the fire out, but sometimes we're not going to put the fire out. But right, in that case, at least they were able to save a lot of memories and a lot of stuff for the family itself.

[05:06] Speaker B: That's right. And you know, the other, the other one that I, you know, a couple of other ones. I can remember a tornado going through the community next to us and with my dad helping to pick up the family's belongings and being in a house that didn't have a roof on it.

[05:19] I remember that like it was yesterday as well. And I always remember my dad telling the story about when he started the fire district. They went around farm to farm to get signatures on petitions to set up the fire district.

[05:32] And he said they only had one person that wouldn't sign the petition. And of course the reason they didn't want to sign the petition is because it was going to raise their taxes.

[05:42] My dad,

[05:43] who's been gone for several years now,

[05:48] told me that that person was the person that had the first fire after they bought fire trucks.

[05:53] So sometimes there's karma involved. To this day, I don't know who it was. Doesn't really matter.

[06:00] But it's a true story, too.

[06:04] And I guess I've had people ask me before,

[06:07] why did your dad get involved in this? I said, well,

[06:10] they were tired of a pasture stubble in a cropland setting catching on fire and then burning down somebody's barn or their house.

[06:20] And so they were adding value to that community, to the. To the quality of life in that community.

[06:29] Speaker A: It's, you know,

[06:30] one of the reasons I'm still active with the fire service is because of what I was able to do with my dad in the firehouse when we only lived, like, four days, three, four houses from the fire station.

[06:41] And when the building siren would go off, this is even before they had plectrons.

[06:46] Speaker B: Right.

[06:47] Speaker A: You know,

[06:49] we would run down the street and stand on the corner to watch the fire trucks leave. And half the men in the neighborhood belonged in the fire department. And they would be running down the street and their cigarettes would be falling out of their shirt pockets and change falling out of their pockets,

[07:04] and some of them were still trying to buckle their pants running down the street.

[07:08] And, you know, I've never gotten over that excitement, even today at 67, and I don't chase fire trucks anymore. But when I hear a siren or I happen to be listening to an old pager here at the house and hear that there's a working fire somewhere in the county,

[07:25] I got to go be nosy.

[07:27] Speaker B: Your ears perk up, that's for sure.

[07:29] Speaker A: Absolutely.

[07:32] Well,

[07:33] Steve, I'm sure as the chair of the National Volunteer Fire Council, I'm sure you.

[07:38] You're often asked this question.

[07:40] What are some of the biggest challenges the volunteer fire service faces today?

[07:46] Speaker B: Well, you know, I think there's.

[07:48] I'm going to put it in three different categories. There's more,

[07:52] and these are pretty broad,

[07:54] the first being retention and recruitment. And I purposely put retention before recruitment because we have to retain the people that we've got first and make sure that they're,

[08:04] you know, that they're happy with the job that's being done in the fire service. So, you know, there's a lot of places, and I know you've got some questions later on,

[08:13] so I'm not going to delve into it too deeply here, but,

[08:18] you know,

[08:19] there are some fire departments that don't have any trouble retaining or recruiting people,

[08:24] others that just,

[08:26] it's just a big issue. And you know,

[08:29] I've seen the numbers out of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania about where your numbers have went, and Pennsylvania's different than every other state around the nation.

[08:42] The numbers are bad.

[08:44] And we'll talk a little bit here about why I think that is and what we could do to maybe improve on that. That's first.

[08:52] Second is, of course, budgets.

[08:55] We just bought a grass rig, it was quarter of a million dollars,

[08:59] and we're getting ready to buy a class A pumper, and that's going to be probably close to 600,000.

[09:09] You know, a lot of places can't afford that. Their, their taxpayers, the tax base is just not there to be able to afford that. So, you know, they need to be looking in the used market and there's a lot of good used equipment out there that they can get for,

[09:23] for decent money. I have a 1997 aerial that we just acquired three or four years ago and paid $50,000 for it. You know, that's a piece of equipment that's pro,

[09:34] probably be well over a million dollars.

[09:36] This thing's,

[09:37] you know,

[09:38] it's in pristine shape. Got it out of Louisiana.

[09:42] But budgets are a big deal. I mean, to think that you'd be paying a quarter of a million dollars for a brush rig is just mind boggling. Let alone, you know, $3,000 for a set of turnout gear and $10,000 for an SCBA and you know,

[09:56] everything down the line.

[09:57] A hundred dollars for a pair of gloves even.

[10:00] And then I think the third thing is leadership.

[10:03] And I don't think we probably spend,

[10:05] at least in my state in Kansas, we probably don't spend enough time on leadership issues.

[10:11] And you know, in my mind, there's always a question about whether or not you can,

[10:16] whether or not you can make a leader or whether you're just born to be a leader. And I think it's probably a mix of both. But I think there's places where leadership is lacking and I think that's a big challenge and we've gotta rise to that.

[10:33] So I think those are the three big issues, really. Ed?

[10:36] Speaker A: Well, Steve, you know, I have to agree with the leadership. Every time we do a live webinar that is related to educating someone on leadership or management.

[10:48] Our enrollment for those programs and attendance for those isn't anything like it is when we're doing something on lithium ion batteries or fire dynamics. And I'm not saying those other things are important,

[11:01] but, you know, I sometimes have to Wonder. And I've made this statement before.

[11:06] You know, when you get a white helmet,

[11:08] do you no longer have to train?

[11:12] I know when I did a lot of in person classes,

[11:15] you know,

[11:16] even with rudimentary basic type stuff,

[11:20] you would have plenty of firefighters in the classes. But the folks that wore the white helmets never attended those classes.

[11:28] And you know,

[11:31] a couple years ago I did an incident command review class. It was just a, you know, a three hour overview and we did a couple of scenarios. There wasn't a single fire chief in the class.

[11:42] Speaker B: Yeah.

[11:44] Speaker A: So I couldn't agree with you more on the leadership aspect of it. I.

[11:51] Even when it's offered,

[11:53] getting people to attend those types of classes is difficult at best at times.

[11:59] Speaker B: Yeah. In Kansas we got a SAFER grant a couple of years ago and one of the components in there, because I was president at the time,

[12:07] was to build some type of a leadership training.

[12:11] And what you're saying is exactly what we've experienced too.

[12:14] It's difficult and I don't totally understand.

[12:17] Tuesday night at fire drill,

[12:20] our chief had went to conference, our state conference with me,

[12:25] and we talked a lot about what went on there and some of the things that we can learn.

[12:35] My comment was when we quit learning, we quit.

[12:42] Speaker A: I made a statement, and I make this statement often. In fact, I just made it to my son the other day.

[12:47] And that is. You know what scares me a lot of times is what people don't know that they don't know and they're not willing to learn what they don't know.

[13:00] Yep,

[13:01] that scares me.

[13:03] Speaker B: Yep. I was just reading a NIOSH report on a silo fire and that was kind of the big.

[13:11] The big takeaway of that was that they just didn't understand what they were getting into.

[13:16] Speaker A: Yeah.

[13:17] So you mentioned this earlier. You talk about recruiting and retention and you separate them and this kind of leads into the next question.

[13:25] A lot of people always mention recruiting and retention in the same thread with one another.

[13:30] I, like you, believe there are actually two separate and distinct challenges,

[13:34] yet they still go hand in hand with one another.

[13:37] What are your thoughts on that?

[13:40] Speaker B: Well, I do think they go hand in hand, but we.

[13:44] Here's what I think.

[13:45] The.

[13:46] And we've been very fortunate in my department.

[13:48] You know, I'm in a county of 2,500 people and I roster a little over 100 volunteer firefighters. Now, are they all real active? No, there's some that are in our outpost stations that aren't real active.

[14:02] They might get a fire or two a year, but you know, I'm very blessed to have a great group of men and women of all ages, frankly. I think a good fire department, a good, great fire department is a department that has both young and old, the young folks who have the stamina to get things done.

[14:24] Because I can guarantee you that fighting a grass fire when I was 25 years old was a whole lot different than fighting it now that I'm 64 and I'm still active responding to calls.

[14:37] But yet I also know that there's times where the old older folks, which is me now,

[14:44] can kind of keep the younger ones from making the mistakes that I made that fortunately didn't kill me or injure me, but sure could have.

[14:56] And hopefully you're spreading that knowledge to the next generation.

[15:00] I'm fortunate to have.

[15:03] We don't have a robust Explorer program, I wouldn't say, but we've got an Explorer program and we've got some young people involved and have had for several years now,

[15:14] age 15 to 18. And I'm going to tell you, I love every one of them to death.

[15:20] They are like sponges. They soak up knowledge like a sponge.

[15:25] And I know,

[15:27] I hear from time to time people will talk about how young people don't learn the way we learn. Well, yeah, that's true.

[15:34] And chances are if I'm teaching a class,

[15:37] they're probably going to be sitting in the back of the room with their phone out most of the time. That's to check to make sure that I know what I'm talking about.

[15:43] And that's okay because that makes me more responsible as an instructor, too, to make sure that I know my stuff before I go into that classroom.

[15:52] But my young people, the young people that I've been involved with, they're just super, super people.

[15:58] And what are they there for? The same reason that you and I are involved and the same reason that every one of your listeners is involved is because our community needs our help.

[16:10] And if it isn't us, who's going to do this job?

[16:13] And it might be my family or your family or our listeners famil who might need help.

[16:20] We talk about volunteer fire service as neighbors helping neighbor when they're having their worst possible day.

[16:27] And what a great thing that we can do this Love what I do.

[16:38] Speaker A: I was an Air Force recruiter and I retired from the Air Force.

[16:43] And obviously, you know,

[16:45] when I went into the Air Force, it was because of the recruiter and the job market. My here in central Pennsylvania, 1977, wasn't all that great. And I was working in a nursing home, and I certainly didn't want to spend the rest of my life working there and then become a patient there.

[17:00] So,

[17:01] you know, I enlisted in the Air Force,

[17:03] but I made a career of it. And I got to tell you, it's probably because of the first couple of leaders I worked for. At my first Air Force base at Ellsworth Air Force Base,

[17:17] there was a technical sergeant by the name of Bill Young,

[17:21] and he was of the belief as a leader that if you took care of the troops,

[17:27] the troops would take care of business.

[17:29] And because of that,

[17:31] and because of the second supervisor I worked for, when I was in Okinawa, Japan,

[17:36] I reenlisted.

[17:39] And it had more to do with the leadership and the way I was treated as a part of the Air Force. Now take me to the end of my career.

[17:53] And they offered me an early retirement. I knew a year before they offered me the early retirement that I was going to go.

[18:01] And the reason was,

[18:03] is because of the leadership.

[18:06] The leadership wasn't the Air Force I grew up in.

[18:13] Because promotions were froze.

[18:16] Everybody was concerned about their own career. We weren't taking care of troops the way we used to take care of them.

[18:23] And it was easy for me to accept the early retirement because the leadership I was working for just wasn't the leadership I grew up with in the Air Force.

[18:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think true leadership is not a top down model necessarily either.

[18:49] There's some things you have to do from the top down. But I think a good leader empowers all of his folks, from the newest recruit to the oldest one.

[19:00] Empowers them to be able to make decisions on their own and empowers them in our system to bring new people on.

[19:12] I think that's pretty important to empower your people.

[19:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I think if you have a good retention program, it equates to a decent recruiting program.

[19:23] Speaker B: Right, agreed.

[19:24] Speaker A: Well, if the outside sees the people that are there happy, it's like, hey, I want to be part of that organization.

[19:31] Speaker B: Yep, I agree.

[19:34] Speaker A: So, Steve, I listened to another podcast you had done.

[19:38] It was called Legacies and Leadership, and you made a statement that got my attention.

[19:43] That fire department should connect with the taxpayer.

[19:47] Please explain what you meant and what fire departments can do to accomplish this.

[19:52] Speaker B: Well, you know, Ed, that's been more than 24 hours ago, so I'm going to guess as to what I was thinking about then. But seriously,

[20:01] you know, our taxpayers in our community,

[20:04] they provide a lot of support to us.

[20:09] You know, out here, west of the Mississippi, we're almost all tax supported. We're not.

[20:13] We're not like the folks in the Commonwealth and those east of the Mississippi where you're doing an awful lot of fundraisers. You're doing the barbecues and the pancake feeds and the subscriptions and all that.

[20:26] We don't have to do that out here.

[20:29] So especially with our taxpayers, we have to continue to connect with them.

[20:34] And that means having a robust social media presence.

[20:39] And I would say, I know maybe Facebook is kind of the.

[20:44] The medium of the past, but, you know, it's.

[20:47] The folks that are paying the bill tend to be a little more older and have the means to support us. And so we utilize our Facebook stuff a lot. We utilize all of our social media, but our Facebook a lot.

[21:05] Just to give you an example,

[21:08] I think it was three years ago.

[21:10] We were very busy. You know, we pay our guys.

[21:14] We were paying them at the time. We were paying them $10 for every run and every training,

[21:19] and the fire board decided that they needed to pay us a little more, so they bumped it to 20. And of course,

[21:26] then that same time that they did that, we hit a string where we were just.

[21:31] We were out all the time. I mean, it was multiple times a week.

[21:37] And of course, I'm the treasurer, so I'm sitting there watching the money kind of flow out. And then I told the chief, I said, you know, we're.

[21:44] We really.

[21:45] It's the board of county commissioners who actually set our levy, not our fireboard. And I said, we really need to probably add some money into this budget because this is.

[21:55] We're having some issues here. We're not able to set aside money for capital purchases.

[22:00] And chief went to the board of commissioners, and when he came back, he said, well,

[22:08] how much did you think we needed? We hadn't really. We talked about how much. And I said, well, I thought if we could get 10,000, I thought that would help us.

[22:15] And he said, well, they gave us 25. 25,000, you know, and that,

[22:21] quite frankly, I lay that on the fact that we've built a rapport with our community and we've built a rapport with our taxpayer,

[22:30] and they know that we're not going to waste their money.

[22:33] We were out on drill night. We were out doing tanker shuttle operations. And,

[22:40] you know, it's very dry out here right now. Extremely dry. So just simple things like not throwing a whole lot of water. And when we did throw water, we threw it on the city park where it would do some good.

[22:53] I mean, people. People notice that kind of stuff that you're not just throwing water out in the street, you're actually using,

[22:58] using the water you're training, but you're using the water to, you know, for, for a benefit too.

[23:04] People notice those kind of things,

[23:08] you know.

[23:08] Speaker A: I couldn't agree with you more.

[23:11] You know, the,

[23:12] I can remember here several years ago we went to pump a basement out for an individual in our first due area and when we got finished, the gentleman was going to offer us a donation.

[23:24] I said, well sir, you know, you pay a fire tax. And he said, what are you talking about?

[23:29] So I explained to him that, you know, on his assessed property value, he paid at the time, it was like a mil and a half of property tax on his assessed property value.

[23:39] And he said,

[23:40] well, you know, I didn't even know that, but here, I still want you to take this donation.

[23:45] Speaker B: Right.

[23:46] Speaker A: You know,

[23:47] and you know,

[23:49] I was being transparent with him and he didn't even realize that on his tax bill there was a fire tax that he was paying.

[23:59] Speaker B: Right.

[24:00] So,

[24:01] you know, we built,

[24:03] you know, we're again, we're in a County of 2,500 people and we've built what I think is just a,

[24:10] an outstanding training facility. And the reason that we did that, we spent very little taxpayer money on that.

[24:16] People in the community said, hey, I'll buy you a cargo container. And you know, we had several do that and, and did a lot of the work ourselves. And we've got, you know, we've got just a absolutely outstanding training facility which is pretty unusual in a little berg like ours,

[24:32] you know, but we were able to do it fairly cheaply and able,

[24:36] you know, people realize that,

[24:38] you know, what we're doing is we're my guys and gals,

[24:43] if you give them a grass fire or a wildland fire,

[24:47] they could do that with one hand tied behind their back and their eyes closed. They're that good at it. When it comes to structure fires,

[24:55] maybe not so good are rescues because those are the low frequency incidents that you don't have. But boy, you got to be prepared for them. And so this filled a gap in our training regimen to be able to make sure that people knew that when they dial 911 they're going to get somebody who's got some qualifications,

[25:17] who's had some training and it just kind of snowballs. Now the real question is,

[25:24] how do you do that if you've got a,

[25:26] if you've got a fire department that's viewed very poorly by your community or maybe Mediocre.

[25:32] How do you get to that point? You know, I've been fortunate that this fire department is one that has a long history of a good reputation.

[25:41] And so you just continue to build on that if you don't have that. Well, you know, it's one step at a time.

[25:49] It's not going to be overnight. And,

[25:52] you know, I guess it's a family,

[25:54] family show. So I have to think about how I'm going to say this. You know, they say that one aw shucks,

[26:03] that's not the right term, but one aw shucks wipes. Wipes out a thousand attaboys, you know, so we got to be.

[26:11] Be careful what we do. And, you know, that means that, you know, when you're wearing that fire department T shirt and you're gonna go to the bar,

[26:19] you best be minding your P's and q's because that fire department shirt says that you represent that fire department.

[26:29] You know, one of the counties a couple of counties away from. Actually, it's a county that adjoins us, I guess, kind of corners on us. They had a EMT that just got arrested for a child sex abuse case.

[26:39] And I just can't imagine how that's gonna impact that agency. And I just don't ever want to get to that point because we don't need those aw shucks moments.

[26:52] And, you know,

[26:54] that's the extreme.

[26:56] You know, having a wreck with a piece of fire apparatus and hurting somebody,

[27:01] losing somebody in the line of duty, hurting somebody really bad. Those are also those kind of moments that are difficult to recover from. But,

[27:08] you know, it's not that they can't be, but we got to be ever vigilant. Ever vigilant.

[27:15] Speaker A: I couldn't agree with you more.

[27:17] It's all about, you know,

[27:19] reputation management, I guess, would be a good way of putting it. And. And I couldn't agree with you more. You know, one. One all shocks,

[27:28] it could wipe out a lot of great or a lot of good that you've done in your community over, you know, over a lot of years.

[27:35] Speaker B: Yep.

[27:37] Speaker A: So, Steve,

[27:39] as I'm going to ask you to put your attorney hat on for a moment,

[27:45] if you could give a fire chief a bit of legal advice,

[27:49] what would it be?

[27:52] Speaker B: You know,

[27:53] I was glad that you gave me some of these questions in advance because I don't know exactly how I would have answered that,

[28:00] but I spent a little bit of time thinking about that. And,

[28:05] you know, this is.

[28:06] It isn't going to be a real brilliant answer because I don't do things that way. I'm not a brilliant person person. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

[28:17] So here's my bit of legal advice.

[28:21] Do what's right all the time.

[28:25] Because that's going to.

[28:26] From a legal standpoint, from a moral standpoint,

[28:30] that's going to serve you very well. And I'm going to give you a little story here.

[28:35] Years ago, we were headed down east of us two or three hours and headed to my folks for Thanksgiving, I believe it was. And there's an apple orchard along the highway.

[28:48] And we stopped and bought a box of apples,

[28:51] actually bought two boxes of apples. And then headed off kind of cross country to get to my folks.

[28:57] We got about halfway to the next town,

[29:00] and I asked my wife how much the check was, and she told me, and I said, that can't possibly be right. That's not nearly enough money for two boxes.

[29:09] So I flipped the u turn in the highway, went back up to the orchard, and she said, yeah, she said, after you left, I realized that I'd only charged you for one instead of for two boxes.

[29:20] So I wrote out a check and headed back down this. It was actually a blacktop state highway, but once you get south of the town, it turns into a county blacktop road.

[29:33] Well, the speed limit's 65 on the state highways, but it's only 55 on the county roads. And I happened to meet a trooper. Well, troopers aren't normally on the county roads, but it happened that he was moving from one state highway to another and used this little segment of county road to make his pass.

[29:53] And so he reminded me that I had an obligation to not do more than 55 miles an hour.

[30:01] Now,

[30:02] here's the moral to that story.

[30:04] Had I not done what was right and went back and paid for that other box of apples, I would have never met him because I would have been way south of where he was coming onto that road.

[30:17] As it was, the box of apples became rather expensive because it was not only the box of apples, but also a traffic ticket to boot.

[30:24] But come morning,

[30:28] come the next week, come today,

[30:30] I look in the mirror and I don't think about having.

[30:34] Taking advantage of somebody by not paying for a box of apples that I was going to eat.

[30:40] And I think that's a.

[30:42] You know, I often, when I'm doing a chief officer class,

[30:46] my reference to that is, no good deed goes unpunished.

[30:51] But there's something about being able to look in the mirror the next day and say, I did what Was right.

[30:56] Is that always going to end up meaning that you're not going to pay a price for that, as I did?

[31:02] No,

[31:03] but I can look in the mirror the next day, and I can be very proud of the fact that,

[31:08] quite frankly, my parents raised me right, I think.

[31:11] And they would have been aghast if I had not done what I did.

[31:16] And hopefully my kids were in the car. Hopefully.

[31:19] That was a message that I sent to them as well.

[31:22] In our fire station,

[31:24] we have a banner that's hanging in there that talks about integrity and honor and tradition and.

[31:33] And we got to live that in our personal lives just like we live it in our fire stations every day. That's pretty important, that integrity part.

[31:45] They often describe integrity as what you do when nobody's watching.

[31:52] Have I made mistakes? Have I done things that I really would prefer that my mother not find out about? Yeah. And I suspect everybody's probably that way.

[32:02] But on the big stuff,

[32:05] I'm okay.

[32:07] And,

[32:07] you know, we're out there as a volunteer fire department, we're out there doing the work of the Lord anyway, because we're helping out our neighbors when they need our help the most.

[32:17] We need to live like it, too.

[32:20] Speaker A: Doing the right thing.

[32:22] I couldn't agree with you as an attorney. That's probably some of the best advice an attorney could give in anybody is do the right thing.

[32:33] Speaker B: Yep. So, Steve, doesn't mean that you're not going to get sued over. It doesn't.

[32:38] Speaker A: That's right.

[32:39] I agree.

[32:40] I couldn't agree with you more.

[32:43] You may still have issues because you did the right thing,

[32:46] but to your point,

[32:48] being able to look yourself in the mirror the next day or 25 years from now and know you did the right thing,

[32:57] it makes all the difference.

[32:59] Speaker B: You bet it does.

[33:01] Speaker A: So, Steve, as we near the end of the podcast, do you have any final thoughts or words of wisdom to pass along to our listeners?

[33:09] Speaker B: Well,

[33:10] I guess the way I would probably sum it up is can you really name me another profession? I mean, I'm an attorney by trade.

[33:18] Can you name me another profession other than firefighting?

[33:22] Being a volunteer firefighter especially,

[33:25] that's any better job out there. I mean,

[33:30] I always tease people that I fight fires at work and I fight fires after work, too, because I'm fighting literal fires in the fire service and I'm fighting figurative fires as an attorney,

[33:44] and I'm proud to be an attorney, too. But there isn't anything that makes me prouder than being a volunteer firefighter.

[33:51] I've been there and held the hand of people who I was the last warm body that they touched as they escaped to the next realm.

[34:01] I've been there and prayed with people who were hurt very badly.

[34:06] I've seen stuff that most people will never see in their lifetime.

[34:14] And that causes us some problems in the fire service because we've got people that you have a lifetime of that stuff and it builds up on you. And I understand that.

[34:21] But man, I'll tell you what,

[34:23] if there's another job out there that you could get more rewards out of other than being a volunteer firefighter, I don't know what it is.

[34:32] I'm proud to be a volunteer firefighter. Proud to be from a volunteer firefighter family,

[34:37] very proud to represent the volunteer firefighters of this nation as the chairman of the nvfc.

[34:44] Speaker A: Well,

[34:45] I will say I'm glad that you are the chair of the nbfc.

[34:50] It's an organization that I've watched growing and changed quite a bit in the last,

[34:57] even last five or 10 years.

[35:00] And it's because there's people like you involved with it and of course, the others that are involved with it. But you know, during my tenure as the state Fire commissioner that started in 2000,

[35:15] I see a major difference between the NDFC today and what I saw then 25 years ago. And it's because of people like you and others that have made it what it is today and keep doing what you're doing because you're doing the right things.

[35:37] Speaker B: And we will be doing that. I'll guarantee you. We're going to support our volunteer firefighters to the end of the earth.

[35:45] Speaker A: Well, know this. If there's anything I can ever do to help you with that mission, all you have to do is ask.

[35:52] Speaker B: And I knew that before you said it.

[35:56] Speaker A: So we're going to move along here to sign up for the webinars that are coming up and previous recorded webinars. You can visit our link that'll be in the episode notes of this podcast.

[36:13] Share this podcast with your colleagues. You can send them our subscription link also found in the show Notes the that will be part of this.

[36:21] Join us on April 27th for a live webinar. It's at 7pm Eastern Time with a panel discussion with former winners of the Volunteer Accommodation Officer Section Chief John Buckman Award when we discuss what makes a good leader.

[36:36] Great.

[36:37] Also on May 27th at 7pm,

[36:41] Steve will be joining us as our guest when we have a live webinar to discuss the invisible killers in the fire service.

[36:50] Lastly, to our listeners if you have any questions or need any additional information,

[36:55] or if you have an idea for a future webinar or podcast,

[36:58] please email us at InfoProvident INS.

[37:06] Station 1902 signing off. Until next time,

[37:10] stay safe for your family's sake.