When I was in high school, I took a CPR class from another high school student. I quickly fell in love with emergency services and joined his volunteer fire department: the Pinebrook Hills VFD (now a Fire Protection District and since merged with Boulder Heights to form the Boulder Mountain Fire Authority). The rest is history. Since then, I have been a member of (in reverse chronological order -- last to first ;-)

Head Shot

I have been a firefighter since 1977, an Emergency Medical Technician since 1984, and have had a very good "unpaid professional" career -- including a 5 year role as Assistant Chief of a combination paid/volunteer department.  Ah, if only emergency services paid as well as engineering!  Details for the interested are available in my fire/EMS resume

A local paper wrote a very complimentary article about me and my firefighting efforts. Called the Left Hand Valley Courier, the article can be found here.

There is always much discussion about the varying uses of Red Lights And Sirens (RLAS) in these 50 states.  For those who don't know, there is no federal standard about what light colors are used by fire department apparatus -- in addition to the fact that some states allow volunteers to run full RLAS and some don't.  Personally, I think this is ludicrous.  Information is available in my RLAS survey summary results.

For what it's worth, I believe that volunteer firefighters should be allowed to run with full RLAS.  Here are my thoughts (written in 1998 in misc.emerg-services).

 At PHQ
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