MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MARYLAND

Captain Jason Smith talks to Adam Hyland about life and work in Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, and a memorable St Patrick’s Day visit to Dublin

Among the many visiting re ghters who took part in the St Patrick’s Day Parade as guests of Dublin Fire Brigade was Captain Jason Smith of Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service. Two weeks a er he returned home, I caught up with him to hear what life is like at his station in the Bethesda area of Maryland.

“I got to tag along to Dublin with a friend of mine, Captain Jamie Birney, who is originally from Derry, and whose father was a re ghter there,” he tells me. “He came to the States for college and stayed when he got hired by Montgomery County, and we’ve been friends for 27 years. As a member of our Pipe Band, he’d met DFB Pipe Band members at a World War II memorial, got talking about St Patrick’s Day, and the rest is history.”

Career

From a military family, Captain Smith originally intended to follow his father into the Navy, but a severed Achilles ruled him out, forcing him to seek a di erent career path.

“I bummed around for a few years, not knowing what to do, and met a bunch of people, and the happiest of them seemed to be re ghters, so I asked how to go about getting hired, went back to college to qualify as a paramedic, worked as a volunteer re ghter with Montgomery County Fire and Rescue, and eventually got hired fulltime in 2005.

“Most of us start out as volunteers, and that was the case with me,” he adds. “We actually have the biggest combination department in the US, consisting of career and volunteer re ghters.” e move up from volunteer to career re ghter and on to o cer status in Montgomery County is similar to Dublin Fire Brigade, but with a few nuances and di erences.

“You are hired as a recruit and do six months of training to become a Fire ghter 1, with another six-month probationary period in the eld,” he explains. “ en you become a Fire ghter 2, take a few classes and work for a couple of years, and if you meet the criteria, you become a Fire ghter 3.

“A few years and a few more classes later come the rst level of competitive promotions, the rst of which is Master Fire ghter, which is the driver/operator of the units. A er that you can go for Lieutenant, the rst line supervisor in charge of apparatus and equipment, then comes Captain, in charge of a station, then Station Commander, who is ultimately responsible for everything that happens at their station.”

“Above that is Battalion Chief, responsible for up to eight stations, then Assistant Chief, Division Chief and ultimately Fire Chief.”

By his own admission, Captain Smith “moved up the ranks pretty quickly” to become Captain and Station Commander at No.6 rehouse in Bethesda, modestly saying he “got lucky and scored well on all the tests”.

Challenges

Describing it as “a huge place”, Captain Smith says the Bethesda area keeps his rehouse extremely busy, with the volunteer compartment an essential supplement to the career re ghters across A, B, and C shi s who work a 24 hours on, 48 hours o schedule.

“Bethesda is called Mini Manhattan, because it has lots of high rises, and urban centre with businesses and retail, lots of suburbs, schools and everything else. It’s very densely populated – lots of people, lots of businesses, lots of money.

“We have a little bit of everything from apartment buildings to townhouses to family homes, 30-storey high rises with ve-story below ground parking area, and the second deepest metro underground system in the world, so we are kept on our toes with a huge variety of callouts and things we need to keep on top of.

“In the US, the construction of buildings is di erent from Dublin –everything is made of wood over here, and with all that wood, a building can fail within seven minutes of a re starting, so we are all about getting there and getting water on it quickly, so we have a lot of pre-connected hose lines.”

No.6 station has an engine company consisting of Master Fire ghter, Captain, Fire ghter and Fire ghter/Paramedic so that every callout has a paramedic present, a tiller truck with three personnel, and an ambulance, and as is the case with almost all re stations, the EMS calls are the most frequent.

Callouts

“We get a lot of emergency medical calls that run the gamut from cardiac arrest to very minor,” Captain Smith says. “We get a lot of road tra c accidents, but also res, re alarms, gas leaks. It is probably no di erent from DFB, but every time someone calls 911 and no crime is being committed, the Fire Department goes to it, no matter if it is a water leak, gas leak, a re, smoke detectors that are beeping and they want you to change the batteries… pretty much everything.”

Every truck in the area carries rope rescue and extrication equipment on board, and when the need arises, can call on a number of specialist teams within the County.

“We cover 500 square miles and a million people, so we have 35 re stations and two rescue squads, 122 frontline pieces of apparatus, and within them we have specialist teams dealing with HazMat, urban search and rescue, swi water – the busiest in the nation because the Potomac river runs right through our area – rope rescue teams, trench collapse teams, con ned space teams, and if we face a very complex scenario we’ll call these specialist teams out.”

When callouts come in, the huge volunteer section works hand in hand with the career re ghters, travelling together on the re truck, and are seen as a very valuable asset to the department.

“It used to be 100% volunteers in Montgomery County,” Captain Smith tells me, “and some 80% of the re service in the US is still volunteer, especially in rural areas, but Montgomery County has gotten so large and we have gotten so busy, with around 130,000 callouts per year, so it is a lot to ask people to do for free!” e growth of the area has been gradual, but is ongoing, with Captain Smith saying there are currently seven new high rises being built in the next three years in Bethesda, so the chances of being even busier are high.

Being located just outside Washington DC, the rehouse also gets called to a lot of tech and Federal jobs, with all of the jurisdictions around DC also expanding very quickly.

“We also have ve re stations for Federal facilities, and it is unique for us that within our County we also have Federal land, and can be called in to assist when necessary. We’ve also been called to several major incidents over the years, including the Pentagon on 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, so our specialist teams have a long history of involvement in major incidents.”

Atmosphere

With this in mind, Montgomery County has a very comprehensive CISM system in place, with Captain Smith a member of the CISM team.

“We have a psychologist and a therapist who work just for us, and we have a lot of peers spread out around the department o ering support where and when it is needed,” he says. “It’s necessary. ere is a stigma that we are the ones who people call for help, so we don’t need it ourselves, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We are nally turning that corner and realising it is a necessity and that it is ok to talk to people because you will, in your career, respond to calls that will mess with your head and you need a healthy way to deal with that.” e atmosphere within the department is “very positive” Captain Smith tells me, saying that he works hard to ensure this is so because he is “ultimately responsible for morale at station level”.

One thing Captain Smith highlights is that 80% of re ghters working for the department don’t live in Maryland itself because it is too expensive.

“People come from all over,” he tells me. “ e majority live within 50 miles, but a lot of people come in from Virginia, Pennsylvania, we have some driving all the way from New Jersey for their shi , but I guess it shows they enjoy the work. We have a very good set-up here. We have excellent equipment and top-notch training, and it is a nice area to work in.”

Benefits

Crew members can also pick what area they want to work in, with transfer meetings held every three months to hear request for moves to other stations.

“Some people really like working in the rural areas that don’t have hydrants and water tankers, whereas others like the urban areas, and we have a lot of speciality teams if you want to go down a certain route, so there are a lot of options and that is a great bene t. You can pick where you want to serve. You get assigned to a station and if you like it, great, stay as long as you want, and if you don’t like it, you can easily put in a transfer.

“Some people really love their speciality. ere is no push – you don’t have to join a specialist team. And that is a good thing because the people on those teams are there for the right reasons: they want to be there, they pick what they are most interested in and work towards that.

“Another big thing about Montgomery County is our diversity,” Captain Smith adds. “We are one of the most diverse areas in the nation. Being close to DC, we have people from all over the world living in Montgomery County, so it is very nice to be able to interact with di erent cultures and to meet di erent people and hear a lot of di erent languages.

“Within our Fire department, we put a big emphasis on diversity in our hiring because we want people who can relate to everybody. At the moment, we have the second highest percentage of female re ghters in the country, just behind San Francisco.”

Dublin

Going back to his recent visit to Dublin, Captain Smith is full of praise for the reception he and his colleague received, saying it was a memorable experience.

“It was a fantastic day. We ew in the day before, marched in the parade, and then the next day we went up to Derry and stayed there for four days, touring around Northern Ireland. We have parades here, but not to that scale. It was amazing. All of the people I met were very welcoming, allowed us to join in. It was such a phenomenal experience and it was amazing to see the sheer number of people - there were no breaks in the crowd for the entire length of the parade! Everybody cheering as we walked past, a very unique experience, especially being at the front of the Parade as DFB are. It is neat that DFB leads it every year.

“I’d love to come back. I have talked with my people at work about coming back. I’d like my family to come too because they would enjoy it, so I would love to return because it was fantastic.”