by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 22, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
There is a rule on the fireground that every officer learns early and never unlearns: the people who fight the fire and the people who set the conditions for it have to belong to the same conversation.On a structure fire, that means the inspector who walked the...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 20, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
A friend of mine flies a Chinook on fires. He posted a clip the other day from the Aspen Acres Fire in southern Colorado — working out of Lake Isabel, two thousand gallons on the line, ninety-five hundred feet. His caption was five words long: needed a bigger bucket,...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 12, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
On Monday night, a post started moving through the weather corners of social media warning of a major NOAA outage. Radar data delayed. Alerts arriving forty minutes late, some of them showing up after the warning they described had already expired. Do not rely on your...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 11, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
BEHIND THE ALARMFred R. LaPoint | Fire Chief & Paramedic, Stronach Township Fire DepartmentA viral theory says wildland firefighters let fires burn because big fires pay better. Its own statistics come from a state law written to argue the opposite — and they...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 10, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
There is a photograph that comes out of almost every one of these disasters, and once you have seen it, you cannot stop seeing it. A residential street burned to the slab. Foundations, chimneys, the melted aluminum puddle where a car used to be. And standing over all...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Aug 9, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
Two Hundred and Eight DaysOn the night of Thursday, August 6, about two hundred people crowded into a banquet room at the Island Club on Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego. They were the wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, and stepparents of the roughly five...
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...
