After over 30 years in the local Fire Service, I am hanging up my helmet!  It has been a very long career, and one that I will surely miss. I am more than fortunate enough to retire and still have my health! For the last 4 years I have been the Sacramento Fire Department’s “Public Information Officer”. I left the fire house back in 2006 for a lot of reasons, but the main reason is that being a Firefighter takes its toll and I needed a change. I considered doing other “desk jobs” in the fire department, but none of them appealed to me as much as being the PIO. People that know me know that I have a passion for talking! And I love to talk about things that are near and dear to me. That is w

Around 10:00 A.M. Monday July the 5th, four Sacramento Firefighters were injured while on the scene of a natural gas leak on 25th Avenue in Oak Park. Three of the Firefighters are still in the hospital. They all suffered burns when the home exploded. The cause of this fire and explosion is still under investigation. All of the Firefighters will make a full recovery, but their injuries were severe and they will have to go through months of treatment. We were very lucky that no one lost their life in this explosion. The Sacramento Fire Department has received many calls from the public expressing their well wishes to these Firefighters. Get Well cards and letters can be mailed to: Sacram

The Sacramento Fire Department recently started our “Open House” program. The public is invited to attend any of these events, and meet your Firefighters and see the equipment and tour the stations. The times are 2:00 – 5:00 P.M. The dates and locations are below and you can also visit our website at www.sacfire.org for more information..... • May 22 Station #13 1100 43rd Avenue • May 29 Station #15 1591 Newborough Dr • June 5 Station #11 785 Florin Road • June 12 Station #57 7927 East Parkway • June 19 Station #5 731 Broadway • June 26 Station #10 5642 66th Street • July 10 Station #6 3301 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. • July 17 Station #16 7363 24th Street • July 24 Station #17 1311 Bell

Recently careercast.com, a job search web site, did a study and listed what they found to be the most stressful jobs of 2010. Firefighter came out as the most stressful job in their study. Although some of you may or may not agree with this report, I thought that I would give you a little insiders view on some of the things that I believe make our profession stressful. Some may think the obvious; “Firefighting” is what makes our job the stressful one it is. While it is true, the actual act of fighting a fire can be and is many times very stressful. It is obviously very dangerous, and it is very difficult, if not impossible to control everything that goes on around you. The fire ground is

This past Sunday morning I went down to Tiscornia Beach at Discovery Park to do an interview with Univision about Water Safety. There was a recent drowning on the American River near Auburn and the local media was interested in doing a story and hopefully preventing future drownings. Typically this time of the year I will try and do some outreach to the public regarding the dangers of our waterways and what we can all do to prevent this unnecessary loss of life. While being interviewed by the Univision crew I noticed three very young girls, playing in the water. None of them had life jackets on. The new County and City Ordinance require that all children under the age of 12 to wear a life