The first time I went to the National Fire Academy was in 1981, just a few years after it opened. I had only been a firefighter for a little over a year, but the academy was expanding its programming then and was actively recruiting students. I took a one-week class on arson detection, and the course content was good and helped me on the job.
But more than that, the experience of being on campus for that week changed the trajectory of my career, and my life. It was really the first time I had felt like an equal and welcome participant in the fire service community. This is not to say I had been treated badly by my own department. For the most part, I hadn’t. Still, even after more than a year, I mostly felt like an outsider and a newcomer, and I wasn’t sure that would ever really change.
At the NFA, everyone was coming from somewhere else. We were all newcomers and outsiders, coming together for the first time. People there naturally met each other where they were, on equal terms. It was a revelation, and it was inspiring, not to mention fun to meet up with people from all over the country and learn about their experiences.
One person I met during that first week was a woman from Missouri. She was the only other woman on campus that week and was taking a different class, but we naturally gravitated toward each other. It was a conversation with her one night that contributed to the formation of the international organization Women in the Fire Service in 1982, a group that still exists today, now called Women in Fire.
Over the years, I visited the academy for seminars, meetings and to make presentations, and when I left the active fire service, I was hired as an instructor and a curriculum developer in the Executive Fire Officer (EFO) program. Being on campus in this role allowed me to interact with people from all over the world and to facilitate the kinds of conversations that simply cannot happen locally. We had classroom time, people worked on projects together, and there was down time spent – at the gym, sitting in sun outside the dorm, hanging out at the pub, making a trip to Ott’s. I have lifelong friends as a result of those years, and I believe that the course content that we so carefully developed had a real impact on people’s lives and the lives of those they supervised and interacted with after their time at the academy.
Now the NFA is no more, at least in the short term. On two days’ notice, the federal government ceased programs there with no time frame for reopening, only stating that they were “evaluating agency programs and spending to ensure alignment with Administration policies.” A representative from the Department of Homeland Security characterized the NFA as “non-essential.”
Considering the current slash-and-burn approach to anything with the letters D, E, I, I’m guessing that some of the material we developed over the years could be sacrificed. None of it is what most people think of as “DEI,” but the discussion of ethics and conflict management and leadership development and the challenges of serving diverse communities might be enough for the programs to be on the chopping block. This breaks my heart, and it would also be a huge loss for the fire service overall.
There is currently no prediction for when the fire academy might reopen, if at all. I did notice on the website that they are taking applications for a few courses starting in June, although the one EFO course listed has not been scheduled.
I have seen some people praise the closure of the NFA. Why waste money sending people across the country for training they could get in their own town? (Read Chief Marc Bashoor’s take on this.) But this attitude totally misses the point. The academy has always offered a wide range of courses, from purely technical, such as the one I took back in 1981, to those that are more based in leadership and management skills, such as the EFO curriculum. Regardless of the course content and focus, the unique value of the fire academy experience is learning and interacting with those from many other places, who may see or do things differently from you, but who all share the common goal of making the fire service as safe and effective as it can be.
Over the years, many former students have commented that they have learned as much from a conversation over dinner as they did during a formal activity in class. But these two things complement one another – without the formal classroom activity, that dinner conversation would not have taken place.
Some people have suggested that the NFA may be resurrected in a purely virtual format. Certainly, some good education can take place in this context. However, there is really no substitute for face-to-face interaction – the challenge and reward that comes with confronting new ideas and ways of doing things and going through the difficult process of change. This process is amplified and supported in the environment of the NFA, which served as much as a retreat center as an educational institution. Things happened there, sometimes in very short durations of time. Lives were changed. The fire service was made better. If the NFA as we have known it is allowed to die, we will all suffer because of that.
