International Association of Fire Chiefs

They had just gotten a new fire chief six months prior, Josh Waldo out of Tennessee.

So Josh, my good friend and a phenomenal chief, past IAFC president, And really, Josh was just willing to take a chance.

This is a great segue for anybody that has thought about going to the National Fire Academy or getting in the Managing Officer program or the EFO program.

Do it.

So yeah.

Really love that perspective.

And I was kind of curious, with all of your travel with the IAFC going international, when you went international and came back, was there any perspectives that you changed, that you implemented at your department, or different ways you kind of thought about fire service in the U.S. compared to other countries?

Ooh, it depends.

Yeah, so the event you're talking about is we did a massive wildfire tabletop event.

And so we spoke about this a little bit, but this was related to the International Association of Fire Chiefs grant that we got for some consulting to the wildfire in and around the city of Bemidji.

And We had, I think, what would you say, 50 people there from all venues and vocations, from community health to public health to fire, all over, and some people from the state.

And we really talked about... what the Bemidji area would do in the event of a fire and how we would respond.

The Chief has authored over 50 articles and contributed to several other texts and national reports.

Chief Brueggemann served as the President of the International Association of Fire Chiefs in 2002 and 2003, as well as the President of the Board of Directors of the Center for Public Safety Excellence from 2004 to 2017, and he was selected as the Career of Fire Chief of the Year in 2009.

So, Chief, I can go on and on with career accomplishments.

We're going to talk about a lot of that today in your ongoing endeavors with the Leadership Crucible Foundation.

Mm-hmm.

I always encourage people to go to hazardous materials conferences, particularly the national ones, the ones that have national reputations, like the International Association of Fire Chiefs conference in Baltimore, Continuing Challenge in California, Hot Zone Houston, and as well as the training that you get, the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium offers a tremendous amount of training with outstanding instructors.

And the best part is it doesn't cost you anything because it's federally funded.

Oh, that's excellent.

Keep an eye on it, and keep Home Days and Hill Days in the back of your minds and, you know, uh, once, once everything kinda shakes out and we know where, you know, all the dust has settled, get out there, talk to your local representatives, uh, talk to your, uh, to your, to your representative in Congress to make sure they understand the importance of those programs and how they impact everything that we do.

Now, also during the industry update, uh, Laura Smith, who is the COO of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, IAFC, gave an update from, from that organization's perspective.

But as she was talking, and I'm paraphrasing here, this is not a direct quote, but she basically said, "The future cannot be shaped by chiefs alone, industry alone, or associations and organizations alone." So none of those organizations, none of those bodies can shape the future on their own.

It has to be a partnership among all three.

And that really, I felt lent itself to the panel that I was, uh, responsible for moderating.

That panel, uh, was made up of four individuals, uh, a retired chief, uh, Eric Vallie- Valliere, who is the, um, who is the CEO of the Fire Department Safety Officers Association, FDSOA.

Chief Ernest Malone, who is the chief of the Indianapolis Fire Department but also the first vice president of the IAFC.

John Cunningham, who is the executive director of the North American Training Directors, and Sarah Lee, who is the CEO of the National Volunteer Fire Council.