by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 8, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
Leaving the Rayado MesaFor Earl Watters, for the Lady Liberty, and for everyone who has ever heard those engines coming up the drainage.Earl WattersThere is a photograph I have not been able to put down.The frame is almost all sky. A rotating wall cloud sits over a...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 8, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
The sky over a wildfire looks empty. It is not. It is the most crowded and most dangerous piece of airspace in that county on that day, and everything in it is operating at the outer edge of what the machine and the human being can do.Down low, a helicopter is holding...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 5, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
Crews Will DisengageWhat happened at Devil’s Elbow — and why the fire service owns half of itThe sentence that does not belong in a fire updateOn the morning of Tuesday, August 4, the incident management team running the Tartar Fire in Washington County, Idaho,...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 4, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
BEHIND THE ALARM – THE LEAST UNDERSTOOD BRANCHFred R. LaPoint | August 4, 2026The Least Understood BranchThe United States Coast Guard turns 236 today. A chef talking about firefighters in Detroit explained the service better than any recruiting poster ever...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Jul 29, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
Let me start with a confession that may surprise some of you. I grew up on a party-line telephone, where you picked up the receiver and might hear the neighbors already talking. No cell phone. No computer. I watched every one of these technologies arrive, one at a...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Jul 22, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
By Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief & Paramedic | Behind The AlarmThe last one in the series. A note on the series. When I started this, seven parts looked like enough. It was not. Readers kept raising things that deserved their own treatment, and a subject this...
