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...
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...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Jul 22, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
By Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief & Paramedic | Behind The AlarmShare this one — especially the first item.There is one action on this list that does almost nothing for your own house and a great deal for everyone else on your road. It costs nothing, it takes thirty...
by Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic | Jul 22, 2026 | Behind The Alarm
Before the Order Comes | Part 6Home Hardening on a BudgetMost of what saves a house is free, takes a Saturday, and nobody ever tells you about it.By Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief & Paramedic | Behind The AlarmShare this one.Part 5 was about getting your family out....
