National Fire Academy

And so I think to me, the focus on training, knowing your job, doing your job, having diverse perspectives about training.

So, you know, get outside of your department, come to the Alabama Fire Cause, go to the National Fire Academy or other places throughout the country.

And I know that you guys have experienced that.

Just have a diverse perspective on your job.

And it is very helpful to learn.

Am I wrong? You're right.

So I said about going to the National Fire Academy, and to be honest, it's like coming to the Alabama Fire College.

If we know that 25% of our students are from out of state, somebody in that group is going to have subject matter expertise on something.

So, you know, it's grown a lot since then.

Yeah, I had somebody several years ago, I was taking a class at the National Fire Academy, and one of my instructors had grown up in Long Island and had moved to Cary.

And he said, Cary stands for Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.

I would probably not object to that statement every time I go back there.

I spent 32 years in the fire service, 29 of those 32 years in hazardous materials for Sarasota County Fire Department.

Retired out as captain of hazardous materials and currently teaching with the National Fire Academy and staying involved with the Interagency Board.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Well, I had a number of years in there.

I'm a graduate of the National Fire Academy's Executive Development Program.

The Incident Command System is a functional structure for how emergency incidents of all type are managed.

Came out of Project Firescope in California many decades ago, and I'm one of the architects of that Incident Command System structure that's used all across the country and in many other countries for managing emergency incidents.

This is more the funding, the SAFER Grant.

Um, you know, we really fought to get the National Fire Academy and USFA back open, uh, earlier this year.

Um, so things like that on, on the national level, um, it, it's really important what they're doing.

Um, we have a, a fall meeting coming up in, uh, a month or two, so w- we'll see what, what news on the agenda we pass.

But it would be in the federal government, and you'd have to find somebody that would be vested in the value of it because it's service delivery model agnostic.

I think that it might put some people off, you know, like if you put it under the National Fire Academy, you know, someplace else in DHS as a standalone or even NHTSA EMS.

I mean, I hate to put them on the spot, but, you know, they would be a great spot for it.

They are outstanding at bringing the different service delivery models together to speak about issues that are relevant to the profession and for advancing things that are important to the profession.