by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Oct 13, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
Most people carry the same picture of an ambulance call, and it is a reasonable picture, because it is the one they have seen. The truck arrives. The patient is right there. The crew goes to work, gets the patient on the cot, loads up, and drives away. Three steps,...
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...
