In the last few years Miami Dade Fire Rescue has lost so many firefighters in their prime, it’s hard to fathom. We are still reeling. It’s taken me a few days to process the loss of Maggie Lane, but I’ve come to feel her life defines her far more than her death. It’s Maggie’s life […]

. . House Fire is a chapter from my novel Thread of Steel, a work in progress.    You can read Tunnel Vision about Tara’s first hoist here . > > >     House Fire, a short story   Firefighter Scott hesitated. She knelt with a charged hose line in her hands watching heavy black smoke […]

Refugees who need emergency medical treatment on the shores of our country have left their families behind in search of a better life.  November 2015: The Mediterranean Syria is in the midst of civil war. More than three million Syrian refugees, many of them educated professionals, have fled their country with nothing but their children […]

“There are things that upset us. That’s not quite what we’re talking about here, though. I’m thinking rather about those images or words or ideas that drop like trapdoors beneath us, throwing us out of our safe, sane world into a place much more dark and less welcoming. Our hearts skip a ratatat drumbeat in […]

    “Black Hawks crossed the sky with Humvees dangling beneath like enormous steel spiders. A C17 took flight while inside intensely focused critical-care teams crisscrossed the plane’s leviathan belly. Young soldiers with rifles and a hundred pounds of gear on their bodies trotted for miles down a seemingly endless road. And there we were–a […]

Triple F—A Manifesto   Manifest discipline—emotionally, professionally, morally and intellectually. Let your discipline be revealed in the way you dress, speak, walk, work, and comport yourself with co-workers and the public. Develop attention to detail. Start small and work up.  Take pride in the little things.  Kick ass on the big things.   Embrace compassion […]

Heroes Wear Haix     It didn’t take me long as a rookie firefighter to understand the importance of having good boots.  The blocky rubber boots issued in the academy and made for men felt like chunks of concrete on my feet, and as soon as I graduated to the field I invested in a good […]

    This is an excerpt from Thread of Steel, a novel I’ve been working on about a firefighter struggling to become a special ops flight medic.  Here, Tara Scott is performing her first hoist during flight medic training with Air Rescue while her instructor, Captain Rick Spencer watches closely.   This is fiction, which […]

MBAT–Mindfulness Based Attention Training, is a University of Miami study funded by the Department of Defense to determine if mindfulness training can impact firefighter stress and resiliency in a positive way.  My department, Miami Dade Fire Rescue, is the guinea pig.  I first wrote about it in my blog Jedi Mind Training, but my crew and […]

The Station Ready Rookie; Firefighter Preparation Beyond the State Skills Test is a slender gem of a book.  Simple.  Concise.  Direct.  And yet it is chockfull of wisdom and common sense.  It lays out practices essential for anyone who wants to excel in the fire service.  If firefighting is just a paycheck and an ego […]