Why do we have accidents? Sure, we have a dangerous profession. But are accidents just the inevitable results of a perilous environment? I hope you don’t think so. We can and should look for ways to avoid injuries and worse for our personnel. In this story, Curtis Heaton and I talk about a couple issues on three historical fatality fires. I hope you listen and then think about what you might do in a similar circumstance. Remember we can’t improve performance if we don’t study and make changes.

Thanks for listening but don’t forget to read my memoir, Both Sides Of The Fire Line, available at your favorite bookstore.

It’s been a busy last few months preparing for my book release and then the last three weeks visting book stores for readings and signings. It’s exhausting talking to strangers about what has been a closely held “secret”. Ok, maybe not a secret, but I’m talking about some very personal information to people I’ve never met before. Or if I have met them, maybe they were employees who I never talked about my personal life with.

In this episode of BobbieOnFire, I’ll relate a story from the book as well as some perspectives based on what I’ve learned in the last few weeks talking about leadership, gender and just being a kind person. Hope you will all consider reading my book and sharing it with your friends. I don’t preach. I just hope everyone will be open to a proven fire leader sharing information about growing up trans in the fire service. Thanks for listening as always!

This is my first attempt to post a video recording for one of my stories. It was an impromptu effort so please give feedback. My friend John and I went for a little 4 wheeling trip north of Phoenix and when we drove past a small side road that led to an old mining claim, I told him a story about a fire that occurred back in 1976 when I was working there. A few minutes later when we stopped to enjoy the views, John whipped out his phone and said to me, “tell the story that you just told me about the fire at the mine”.

No deep lessons here. No big leadership tutorial. Just an old retired firefighter reminiscing about a fire 45 years ago. Please leave a comment and let me know if you prefer the audio or video stories. Thanks for listening.

I’ve often thought that firefighters might make poor employees if they were working at the local Ace Hardware store, business office or factory. In those jobs, you likely know what’s going to happen at work 2 or 3 days ahead of time. For me and many other firefighters, that predictability of what’s going to happen ahead of time would be a killer. The best part of being a firefighter was that you never knew what was going to happen that shift as you drove to work. When I was a county structural firefighter, you might go from an auto accident to a medical call to a fire to a mountain rescue. What fun!!! At least it was for me. And it is for hundreds of thousands of firefighers around the world. But there’s more to the story. If you spent your youth becoming accustomed to the fast pace of fire operations, you start to imagine that anyone who thinks differently than yourself must be weird or somehow “less than”. It’s not them fellow firefighters, it is us. Hope you enjoy this story.

It’s Christmas this week and my story today is about how to accept a gift. It shouldn’t be that hard to accept a gift but I might have had a tough shell wrapped around my soft sweet center for all those years while I was working as a firefighter (maybe even still). I believe most women firefighters can identify with what happened to me. This story doesn’t include any knuckle dragging firefighters calling me a bitch. On the contrary, it is a story of a gentlemen wanting to be helpful to me while I was on duty. But it’s pretty funny in it’s own way. As you’ll hear, I was unsure how to react to his unnecessary kindness. All I could do was smile and say thank you. Hope you enjoy the story, love the meaning of our holiday season and accept whatever gift you’re given with grace and a smile. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you.

Last week’s story was a bit more heavy than what I had originally intended for this site. So today I’m posting a story about what it’s like to be working on the holidays. Lots of folks have to work the holidays so I’m not trying to make this another “hero” story. If you’ve listened to my other stories you know that’s not my intention. But after 40 years of experiencing things like… being on a wildland fire and watching families across the lake from the fire having their weekend camping trip playing in the water; or missing my son’s first day of kindergarten because I was at the Yellowstone fires in ’88; or numerous holidays where I tried to incorporate my family and those of my co-workers into the fire station dinner the best we could.

This story relates a few of those outstanding memories from the years of having to work on the big holidays. Even though I’ve always enjoyed my work and have been happy to be of service, I have to admit to a certain melancholy when working on a holiday. For me, the best thing that could happen if you’re working the holiday is to be busy. Members of the public might not understand why a firefighter would want to be busy at work but you really want firefighters who are enthusiastic about going to work. And having a slow shift on a holiday when you’re separated from family was the worst for me. I hope this story gives you some insight to what’s going on behind those fire station doors on the holiday. Thanks for listening folks and I’d appreciate you “liking” and “sharing” to spread the word of this little site.

Last night I was having a drink and dinner with some friends of mine. We’re all 64+ year old women either retired, or getting close to retirement. Neither of my friends who I was enjoying the evening with are firefighters but they do enjoy the stories that you all listen to here. I don’t know how we got on the subject of the lasting impacts of being a firefighter but I probably mentioned something about how some of my co-workers and I share some internal “wounds” from things that we’ve experienced on the job. One of my friends was surprised to hear that firefighters might suffer from post traumatic stress (or PTSD). She thought it was something only soldiers have to deal with. I assured her that it wasn’t that uncommon amongst the ranks of firefighters and police. I described a story of how I became aware of how some of these emotional impacts surface in our lives. As we spoke she realized that she too had some lingering stress from the untimely passing of her daughter. Of course she does. We probably all do since none of us live in a bubble. This is a short story describing how my eyes were opened to my own scabbed over wounds. Please listen, like and share. It helps get the word out on this website. Thanks all and take care of yourselves, love ones and friends.

This short story is about one of my favorite “knucklehead” firefighter buddies and how he pranked me while working a shift on my fire engine. It illustrates how we managed the stress of the job through silly jokes and pranks. I have so many good memories of these kind of firehouse antics and I think they can help paint the picture of what might go on behind the scenes with your local firefighters. Hope you enjoy the story and if you do, please share the site with your friends.

Over the years I’ve had to walk the line between being a hard ass in order to maintain my position as a female fire leader and not going too far due to being overly sensitive. Its tough sometimes for a female leader in the fire service. I’m not saying it is for all female leaders but it has been for me from time to time.

As I became more secure in my role as a captain, then Chief, I think I got better at knowing when to engage and be the hard ass and when to smile to myself and just walk away. This is an example when I didnt engage too much becaue I knew it wasn’t important enough. I have many amusing stories of when I had to engage and be the hard ass. I think the next story will be about when I was very much the hard ass. But for now, I hope you enjoy this story of some of my wonderful knuckleahd firefighters.

Firefighters come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, genders and colors. Our abilities and skills other than firefighting range from building construction to floral arranging. Some of us are real techies and others (like me) have difficulty turning a computer on and off. This story is about my good friend and co-Operations Section Chief on an Incident Management Team in the Pacific Northwest who is a bit like me…. technologically challenged. In a previous story titled “North to Alaska” he was affectionately referred to as “Knucklehead Number 2”. During many emergency incidents with our team, my good friend Knucklehead Number 2, said and did many things that caused me and those around us to laugh. Often times he did so without meaning to be funny. I was often the brunt of his behavior and that was just fine with me. He was like the brother I always wished I had. So when I had the opportunity to provide some payback to my buddy knucklehead… I pounced.

For those of you who might not have read “North to Alaska” in a previous episode, I went into more detail about how the Incident Management Teams work. This story is about that same group of team members. It’s not a particularly important or critical story. But it illustrates that when the business of saving lives, protecting property and managing our nations wildlands, those professional “heroes” that everyone loves can behave like children. And those are the times I cherish many years later. I hope you enjoy the story.

The last 6 episodes have been pretty lighthearted stories. I’ve tried to share what goes on with firefighters that we don’t want anyone to see. I hope you’ve been laughing as you’ve listened to all our antics.

As I was talking to my friend John (who used to be a wildland firefighter himself many years ago), he suggested that all the stories don’t necessarily need to be funny. I have many serious, sad, exciting and kind of terrifying stories but I worry that will lead to the public getting those Hero ideas in their head. And as I explain a little in this story, I hate that label. Firefighters are professional and hard working. We just happen to be put into the position to help when things go wrong for people. We’re the ones you see and it is our job.

So then what about this story? I always thought this was a funny story. I always laughed when I thought about it or told others. Often times my reaction wasn’t the same as those listening to me tell the story. I wasn’t sure why that was. When I told John what the story was about, he said “why do you think it’s funny?” I was perplexed. I just did. When you get towards the end of the story, hopefully you’ll see what I mean.

Now what is the point of this story? I’ve known that we rarely understand how we’re impacting those friends, family and co-workers around us. How do people perceive us? How do the words we use impact on those who are observing us? We might just nonchalantly say or do something without thinking too much about it. When I became a Deputy Chief on a unit, I realized that everyone was watching me and paying attention to my words and actions. It took me awhile to learn that lesson. It is a basic point of leadership but sometimes lessons come hard. So the bottom line for me was… our actions and words sometimes have unintended outcomes. Be deliberate, be aware and be positive. Hope you enjoy the story and find the humor in it too. The next story will be a funny one. Thanks for listening!

Today’s short story is about an EMS call we responded to a few years back. It was quite interesting since it turned out to be an unusually dangerous spider bite.

I’d love to hear feedback and suggestions to improve the stories. But I need to keep the stories truthful.

When you’re a firefighter, everyday when you go to work you have no idea what is going to happen. That’s why we do it. It’s the perfect job for those of us with short attention spans. Was the medical call we were just on boring? No worries, in 20 minutes you could be helping someone in a car accident or rappelling down a cliff to rescue a fallen hiker. But often, the call could be something goofy. This story is one of the many goofy things that continues to make me laugh.

Here is the audio story of one small incident that occurred during my nearly 30 days in NYC following the attacks on Sept 11, 2001.