IF YOU'RE READING THIS ARTICLE, THERE IS A good chance that you are a firefighter, married to a firefighter, related to a firefighter, or just in the fire industry. There also might be a chance that you picked up Fire Engineering out of interest while passing the time. Regardless of how you arrived to focus your eyes on this article, I want to tell you my story about a fire I was unaware of. I was the chief of a volunteer fire department in Ohio (until my retirement in January 2019). I was also an engineer for General Motors. Besides the two demanding jobs, I also juggled a wife, two teenage boys, three dogs, and a cat. My full-time job took up to 10 hours a day on the clock. This left 14 hours to drive, sleep, eat, and take care of firehouse business including local and regional fire meetings. My employer expected leadership, excellence, punctuality, and commitment. In addition, weekend work was mandated if operations were running. Whenever there was a surprise issue at work and it needed to be resolved right away, we called it "firefighting."
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