by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Sep 26, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
In May, the council the President appointed to reexamine the Federal Emergency Management Agency delivered its final report. Near the top is a sentence every household in America ought to read twice. Disaster response, the council wrote, should be “locally executed,...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Sep 19, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
A Nebraska city turned away a licensed EMT because he was homeschooled, then rewrote its job posting to fit the decision. In a fire service that can’t fill its seats, every chief should study what happened in Fremont.Andrew Coates is 22 years old. He volunteers with...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Sep 18, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
CASE STUDY · A TEACHABLE MOMENTPull up a chair. Today’s case study doesn’t come from a fireground, and nobody died. That’s exactly why it belongs in front of a class.If you’ve sat through a post-incident analysis, you know how they tend to go. Somebody draws the...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Sep 12, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
The last patient care report one of my firefighters filed did not stay in our station.It went out over the wire to a server I have never seen, in a building I could not find on a map, administered by employees of a company I have never spoken to, protected by security...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Sep 11, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief ParamedicI was on duty on September 11, 2001.I was twenty-two years into my career with the City of Manistee Fire Department, and it was the longest shift of my life. There were a lot of reasons for that, but the one that sat heaviest was...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Sep 8, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
Retired FDNY Lieutenant Gerard M. Reilly of Ladder 22 died on September 3, 2026. He had given the department twenty-one years. What killed him was a World Trade Center-related illness, contracted at a fire scene he was ordered to and never really left.He died eight...
