The Model City Firefighter is headed to the Motor City to provide mutual aid!

A couple months back, the Detroit Mutual Aid Project was launched to raise much needed funds to purchase equipment for our brothers and sisters in Detroit, MI. As a Board Member of the National Firefighters Endowment, I have been involved with the project since…

ModelCityFirefighter.com’s newest article of Blowin’ Smoke features Kevin Shea, a retired firefighter from FDNY. We are very excited about this Blowin’ Smoke article and grateful for the opportunity to interview Shea on the site. I had the pleasure of meeting him earlier this year in Chicago at Fire Rescue International. He is about as humble as they come and is a wealth of knowledge. We hope you enjoy the interview.

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As I sat in the recliner last night watching the NBC Nightly News special coverage about Hurricane Sandy last night, I have to admit…tears came to my eyes. Seeing the fires at Breezy Point, the mass destruction on the coast line, and hearing the tales of heroism by the first hand accounts of all those who were there. Little did I know that when this happened one year ago, this destruction would also change my life forever even being 10 hours away.

In mid-October of last year, a…

To date, my department has lost FOUR of our own in the Line of Duty/ On-Duty. All of these were killed/died prior to me joining the department. I did have the opportunity to meet the four families of our fallen during our Fallen Firefighter Memorial Service that was held at the end of August. I wrote a short piece on the article…

Blowin' Smoke is a series of articles published on ModelCityFirefighter.com that consist of a Q&A session with veterans in the fire service. These individuals are asked a series of questions about their career and experiences they have witnessed. This edition is with an 18 year veteran of DFD that is currently assigned to Detroit's…

Professionalism means acting appropriately and in a manner that is acceptable and careful. Applied to the fire service, a professional is not whether or not you are paid or volunteer. That is a topic that often brings out the most heated of discussions, but there is a division nationwide between volunteers and career firefighters.

I recently had a conversation with a…