Episode 215 - Mistakes Writers Make about Firefighters with Thomas Dunne
December 5, 2023
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This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I talk with Thomas Dunne about MISTAKES WRITERS MAKE ABOUT FIREFIGHTERS, including the fact that firefighting is a small part of a firefighter’s job; how the variety of firefighter roles enables story and character depth; story opportunities involving false alarms; how where there's fire, there's (almost) always smoke, and portraying the experience of moving through smoke by tapping into all the senses; life in a firehouse, including the official and unofficial hierarchies; and the variety of personalities who choose firefighting.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
Links, summary, and transcript at https://bit.ly/TIAP215
You can also check out News from THE HOT SHEET, courtesy of Jane Friedman, at https://bit.ly/TIAPNewsHotSheet
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
Links, summary, and transcript at https://bit.ly/TIAP215
You can also check out News from THE HOT SHEET, courtesy of Jane Friedman, at https://bit.ly/TIAPNewsHotSheet
"A guy I worked with and liked a lot made the analogy that a 24-hour tour in a New York City firehouse was almost like being in prison, because we had to stay there for 24 hours. We wore the same clothes. We worked out with weights together. We ate the same meals together. And we always complained about the same things. So the overall flavor of the firehouses, in my experience, has been, it was kind of a loud, tough environment where if you can imagine a bunch of alpha males competing for their ranking in this informal bureaucracy that's there." —Thomas Dunne
Thomas Dunne is a retired Deputy Chief and 33-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department with extensive experience working in Mid-Manhattan and the Bronx, including acting as incident commander at hundreds of fires and emergencies in the city. Chief Dunne lectures at conferences and colleges across the country, has written numerous magazine articles, and serves as an adjunct instructor for the National Fire Academy and Kean University. He is the author of NOTES FROM THE FIREGROUND, a memoir of his experiences with the FDNY, and the novel A MOMENT IN TIME.
Links
Tom's Links:
Author website: www.chieftomdunne.com
Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/thomas.dunne.7568/
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-dunne-b6950b250/
References in Interview:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/08/nyregion/bronx-fire-nyc.html
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
Author website: www.chieftomdunne.com
Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/thomas.dunne.7568/
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-dunne-b6950b250/
References in Interview:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/08/nyregion/bronx-fire-nyc.html
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Tom! Did you get any ideas for your own stories based on the information Tom shared?
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!
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AI-generated Summary
Have you ever wondered about the life of a firefighter? The action? The atmosphere of a firehouse? Or perhaps you're drafting your next novel and have a main character who's a firefighter. The reality of firefighting is far removed from Hollywood portrayals. Understanding the nuances can help you write more authentic characters and scenes. While no better person can shed light on the reality of being a firefighter than a seasoned professional like Thomas Dunne.
Diving into Firefighting
A retired deputy chief and 33-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department, Thomas Dunne shared insightful glimpses of the life of firefighters on the Indie Author Podcast. Dunne lectured at conferences and universities across the country while also authoring numerous magazine articles. He wrote his memoir, "Notes from the Underground," based on his experiences with the FDNY and the novel "A Moment in Time."
Dunne expands on common misconceptions about the work of firefighters and how many fires they tackle. Thinking the life of a firefighter involves stepping into an inferno every few hours is far from reality, Dunne mentioned. He suggested that authors weave in aspects like answering fake calls, carrying out maintenance tasks, researching firefighting techniques or scenarios, or even downtime and sleep.
Sensory Details Matter
Dunne further explains the sensory experiences in firefighting as encompassing more than just visual cues. He delves into the smell of tar and smoke, the feel of handling firefighting tools, the hiss of the breathing apparatus, and the harsh calls from squad mates.
The physicality of the job is crucially important, he said. Description can include how a firefighter’s breath quickens inside a respirator mask. Equally critical is the post-fire atmosphere: the lingering smell of smoke and the soot everywhere. These are elements that can add depth and authenticity to a scene.
Life in the Firehouse
At the crux of writing a firefighter's story is depicting life in a firehouse. Dunne made it clear that firehouses differ from one place to another. Some might be a clamorous alpha-male-dominated environment, while others might be more laid back. Each firehouse has its own dynamic and individual character that distinguishes it from others.
While there's an allure to sliding down the fire poles, it's not as common as people imagine. Newer firehouses might not even feature them. But the tradition continues, with alterations, including steel poles replacing the older brass ones.
There's equal diversity among firefighters, dispelling myth that they're all burly, mustachioed men. Men and women in the service come from various backgrounds — from blue collar to lawyers, architects, or even actors. Firefighters joined the profession for different reasons. Some have lifelong dreams of firefighting, inspired by generations of family tradition; others having stumbled into it by chance.
True-to-Life Characters
The key takeaway from the interview is that when writing a character who is a firefighter, they should not be one-dimensional. Firefighters can be heroes saving lives, or they could be everyday people, coping with mundane routines and the occasional inferno. These characters come with unique backstories, motivations, and personalities, and that’s what makes them compelling to readers.
The world of firefighters offers a broad canvas for writers, but it's necessary to delve beyond the stereotypes. As Dunne suggests, don't be afraid to play with the tropes, yet ensure to embody authenticity throughout the character and the scenes.
Diving into Firefighting
A retired deputy chief and 33-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department, Thomas Dunne shared insightful glimpses of the life of firefighters on the Indie Author Podcast. Dunne lectured at conferences and universities across the country while also authoring numerous magazine articles. He wrote his memoir, "Notes from the Underground," based on his experiences with the FDNY and the novel "A Moment in Time."
Dunne expands on common misconceptions about the work of firefighters and how many fires they tackle. Thinking the life of a firefighter involves stepping into an inferno every few hours is far from reality, Dunne mentioned. He suggested that authors weave in aspects like answering fake calls, carrying out maintenance tasks, researching firefighting techniques or scenarios, or even downtime and sleep.
Sensory Details Matter
Dunne further explains the sensory experiences in firefighting as encompassing more than just visual cues. He delves into the smell of tar and smoke, the feel of handling firefighting tools, the hiss of the breathing apparatus, and the harsh calls from squad mates.
The physicality of the job is crucially important, he said. Description can include how a firefighter’s breath quickens inside a respirator mask. Equally critical is the post-fire atmosphere: the lingering smell of smoke and the soot everywhere. These are elements that can add depth and authenticity to a scene.
Life in the Firehouse
At the crux of writing a firefighter's story is depicting life in a firehouse. Dunne made it clear that firehouses differ from one place to another. Some might be a clamorous alpha-male-dominated environment, while others might be more laid back. Each firehouse has its own dynamic and individual character that distinguishes it from others.
While there's an allure to sliding down the fire poles, it's not as common as people imagine. Newer firehouses might not even feature them. But the tradition continues, with alterations, including steel poles replacing the older brass ones.
There's equal diversity among firefighters, dispelling myth that they're all burly, mustachioed men. Men and women in the service come from various backgrounds — from blue collar to lawyers, architects, or even actors. Firefighters joined the profession for different reasons. Some have lifelong dreams of firefighting, inspired by generations of family tradition; others having stumbled into it by chance.
True-to-Life Characters
The key takeaway from the interview is that when writing a character who is a firefighter, they should not be one-dimensional. Firefighters can be heroes saving lives, or they could be everyday people, coping with mundane routines and the occasional inferno. These characters come with unique backstories, motivations, and personalities, and that’s what makes them compelling to readers.
The world of firefighters offers a broad canvas for writers, but it's necessary to delve beyond the stereotypes. As Dunne suggests, don't be afraid to play with the tropes, yet ensure to embody authenticity throughout the character and the scenes.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Thomas Dunn. Hey, Thomas, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Thomas: Morning, how are you doing, Matty?
[00:00:07] Matty: I'm doing great. Thank you.
Meet Chief Thomas Dunne
[00:00:08] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Thomas Dunn is a retired deputy chief and 33-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department with extensive experience working in mid-Manhattan and the Bronx, including acting as incident commander at hundreds of fires and emergencies in the city. Chief Dunn lectures at conferences and colleges across the country, has written numerous magazine articles, and serves as an adjunct instructor for the National Fire Academy and Keene University. He is also the author of Notes from the Underground, a memoir of his experiences with the FDNY and the novel A Moment in Time.
And I asked, Tom to be on the podcast because he had been very helpful to me with some questions I had about firefighting for my Ann Kinnear novel, Furnace for Your Foe, and I wanted to add his perspective to the Mistakes Writers Make series, sort of focused on prime writers. now we have amassed the mistakes writers make about firearms, police procedure, coroners, first responders, the FBI, PIs, forensic psychiatry, police roles, and bladed weapons, and how to avoid mistakes about those in your writing. And you can find links to all of those episodes at theindyauthor.com forward slash podcast, and then scroll down to Crime Fiction Writer, or you can also find them at the Indy Author YouTube channel on the playlist for Crime Writers.
And just as a side note, I have also added another YouTube playlist for short story writers, that is short fiction. So you can find all that information at my website and at my YouTube channel.
Misconceptions about firefighters' work
[00:01:34] Matty: And so, Tom, I wanted to start out talking about misconceptions that writers might have about the work that firefighters do. What do you see in writing that kind of makes you cringe as a professional firefighter?
[00:01:47] Thomas: Well, a couple of things. I mean, there's some real good stuff out there, but there's also, as you know, a lot of misconceptions, out in the world, out in the writing world, certainly in the movie industry, certainly on television shows. There are a number of shows now that are, I don't watch, that are, you know, not good shows, and there are a lot of misconceptions. But as you pointed out, 33 years as a firefighter and the last 20 years or so as a writer, or would be writer, I kind of have--
[00:02:14] Matty: an actual writer.
[00:02:16] Thomas: I guess at this point I could consider myself a writer.
[00:02:19] Matty: Yes, you can.
[00:02:20] Thomas: but I found myself in an interesting dichotomy in that one foot was in one world, one foot was in the other world, and they were two very different mindsets. in other words, the fire world was sort of a world of activity and action. The writer world, I think of a writer as an observer, and I tried to tie the two together as much as possible. So my hope would be that for the writers who tune into this, who have published or are anticipating writing, for the people who are at least considering writing, I would hope that maybe I could bring up one or two points that might give them a little more realistic approach to the world of emergency response, the world of firefighting, and the ability to create a variety of characters. # Firefighting is a small part of a firefighter’s job.
[00:03:08] Thomas: But you mentioned you wanted to start off with the work, I guess, I won't say illusions, but work misconceptions, and there certainly are a number out there. I think maybe, the first one is the concept that there are a lot of fires, and nationally and statistically there are, but realistically, if you're going to create a character or an imaginary firehouse or fire department as part of your storyline, there would probably be a mistake to introduce a story where they're going to fires like five, six, seven, eight times a night. It's not like that anymore.
That was the case in the so-called war years in New York City, where, for example, the South Bronx firefighters would go literally to 15 to 20 structural fires a night. Fortunately, it's no longer like that, in part because of the economy, in part because of fire prevention activities and things of that nature. Fire is the aspect of emergency response that seems to gather understandably all the attention. But in the last 20 years or so, certainly after 911, the fire department's responsibility and assignments are much broader.
So if you can picture a pie chart, which would constitute all the fire department's activities, in that pie chart, the firefighting would be a relatively small slice at this point. Largely, in urban areas, it might be different. The division I worked in, for example, covered, the Bronx and Manhattan, and over a 24-hour period, you did go to a lot of fires, but I would think it would be a little unrealistic to create a storyline, where somebody was going to a fire, like, every other hour. That just wouldn't happen.
[00:04:55] Matty: Can you talk a little bit about what constitutes the remainder of the pie outside of fighting fires?
[00:05:01] Thomas: a great deal of that, as I said, since 911, the fire department has picked up a lot of peripheral activity, all right? A lot of fire departments have assumed EMS responsibilities, which, you know, may constitute a third or more of the runs of the responses in parts of New York City or other fire departments. Hazardous materials, things of that nature, that are now... A lot of HAZMAT experts, a lot of HAZMAT incidents in the fire department, fire prevention activities, which are not, you know, again, if you want a realistic character, firefighters love going to fires. They love hands on challenges like that. You'll never have to motivate a firefighter. To do something out of fire. Things, the so-called soft areas like fire prevention activities, are not quite as popular, but that takes up a substantial part of any tour, typically.
Things like simple maintenance, you know, there's a great deal of maintenance that's required in the firehouse drill periods where the members of the fire department of that particular working that particular tour would sit down and drill something, which means a rehearsal of how to use a certain type of equipment, a rehearsal of What if situations? What if we had a fire in this type of building? What if we had a bus crash on the interstate? These scenarios, they review before it ever happens. So there's a lot of that going on.
In fact, there's a fair amount of downtime. In many fire departments. I got a, personally got a lot of reading in, mostly in the night tours. You know, during the day tours you kept pretty busy with responses, drill, maintenance, things of that nature. At nighttime, I went through a lot of novels. Had an ability to read a lot, especially since I stayed up most of the night and it was fairly exhausting, but you would do some reading, if you wanted, or studying for, advancement, things of that nature.
So I think maybe the first misconception, again, if someone out there is envisioning writing an imaginary fire department or creating a character, in a typical day by day, activity in that department, don't send them out the door 50 times for fire. That's not going to happen. # The variety of firefighter roles enables story and character depth
[00:07:09] Matty: I think that's good news for writers because even an exciting event like fighting a fire, if you just have a character doing that over and over again, even that would pall after a while. And I think it's actually good news for writers that there's this whole assortment of things a firefighter could be doing. And you could even bake in the idea that, okay, now I have to go to like, you know, the junior high and talk about fire prevention or something. And maybe the frustration that a firefighter would feel if that was what they were spending their day doing when what they really wanted to do was fight a fire.
[00:07:38] Thomas: Exactly. And then there's the frustration of the false alarm. a certain percentage of your responses, you go out the door and you have to be, you know, keyed up and mentally and emotionally prepared every time you go out, but a certain percentage, which will vary depending on where you work, will be for nothing.
For example, when I was a firefighter in mid-Manhattan, there are these mechanical alarm systems in just about every mid-Manhattan building. And they often malfunctioned, and especially, in the wintertime, it seemed to happen more often for whatever reason, and over a 24-hour, tour of duty, there are nights where we might have gone out 10 to 20 times, out the door, you know, lights and siren, all set for action, only to find out that it was, past. A defective alarm system. So there's that sense of frustration sometimes that, you know, there's a sense of wearing down over time when you go out the door a lot.
And certainly when you go out to a fire, you generally know, when you're actually going to do something real. Because, typically, you dispatch some basic dispatch information, and as you're responding, the dispatcher will contact the officer by the radio, so on the apparatus, the truck that you're responding on, you'll hear things like, sounds like you're going to work, fire in the top floor, sometimes you hear things like people are trapped, et cetera, et cetera, and now you're really geared for combat, so to speak, and, you know, you're going to do something real, something real. Fortunately, those are things that you certainly experience over a period of time, but they generally come every so often.
And that's in New York or any urban area, so you can imagine if your character lives or works in suburbia or a rural area. one of the things I always hear as I travel around the country, lecturing, especially to local firefighters, is that there's not enough fires. And that's bad for the fire department, but it's good for the people, but it's not unheard of for me to go to a small department somewhere, give them a lecture, and find out that nobody in that room has even been to a fire in six months, and they know you're from New York, and they envision it as, wow, I wish I was in New York. I should be going to fires every day.
So that's one of the misconceptions. What a typical tour of duty would involve, yes, absolutely. There'd be some firefighting, but it would not be as often as you might expect. There's a lot of peripheral stuff that is somewhat routine, somewhat tedious, you know, that might wear on you for a while.
Story opportunities involving false alarms
[00:10:11] Matty: that reminds me of a story. A couple of years ago, my husband and I were sitting on our porch, and we're, in an area, we're in a forested area that has a lot of, deer, and we're also right down the street from the fire station. And so we were sitting on the porch and we heard this thump, and then the screech of brakes, which seemed odd, but I thought, I bet that a deer ran out into the road; the car hit the deer before it even had a chance to brake, and then slammed on the brakes, and we were kind of trying to look through the trees, it was right down the street from us, you know, trying to see what was going on, and we weren't hearing any noises that made us think it was a big emergency, but I thought, I don't know, you know, if somebody's And I they might just be in the car.
And so I called up 911, and I described what had happened, thinking that they would just send somebody, like, send a police car or something to see if there was even anything going on. And pretty soon, I think they rolled every piece of equipment in the fire department. I think partially just because why not? And then I thought, oh, no, I'm going to get in trouble because I just called out the whole fire department. And then when I made the call, I had given my address, and so pretty soon, one of the guys, I can't remember if it was a firefighter or one of the police officers stopped, and, it was also embarrassing because my husband and I had been drinking wine, so I thought, oh great, they're going to show up and think I just called because, like, I was drunk or something.
But it was super nice, and, you know, I described again what I had heard, and he said, oh, we looked around, The car must have driven away, and we looked in all the ditches, we don't see a deer. But he was super nice about it, and I actually, then a couple of months later ran into the chief, and I described the scenario to him, and I kind of apologized, and he said, no, never apologize, because we would rather hear it than have someone think, oh, well, it's probably nothing, and not make the call. And the next day, I did find a deer in a ditch, so I felt vindicated.
[00:12:03] Thomas: Yeah. people will call in for all kinds of reasons. And, since most people, thankfully, have not actually experienced the fire, or perhaps are not familiar with, everything, in, that's peculiar to their area, or their apartment, or the city, people will call in for things that you look back on and you feel that was a ridiculous reason to call, but... You have to make the call.
Where there's fire, there's (almost) always smoke
[00:12:25] Thomas: And there's the other aspect, I like to call this the Hollywood syndrome. if you've been to any of the movies that came out over the last 20 or 30 years, and I really don't go to them. I saw one years ago. Understandably, Hollywood has a concept of what a fire should look like. And if you see a movie or perhaps an episode in one of these ongoing television serials about fire departments, typically it would be a room full of fire or a building with fire coming out of every conceivable window and no smoke at all. And, you see this over and over.
And nothing could be further from the realities. The realities are that certainly if you have a room full of fire in a typical building, you'll see fire pushing out that window. When you go inside a building, very often you don't see anything. Especially if you're sent to the floors above to do a search for life and see if anyone's been trapped up there, it's really an almost claustrophobic, blinding type of experience where they often say you can't see your hand in front of your face, and that's exactly it. You have a, a face piece on that you're breathing through, so you're kind of very myopic in your outlook. You can't see anything. You're going around almost like with braille. You're feeling your way for security. If you are going down, let's say, the length of an apartment, you typically would keep one hand, maybe your left hand or your right hand, depending on the layout, on the wall, because you can't see anything, and that is your way out.
So, I would say to anyone, again, who wants to, create a realistic fire scene in, in their storyline, yeah, absolutely, it has to be fire, all right, perhaps there's some heat, if you're feeling that in the hallway, or certainly in the floors above, but to make it realistic, I would definitely incorporate The smoke aspect of it, because that's, more than anything, that, that is what's going to overwhelm you at a fire.
[00:14:32] Matty: A really interesting resource, and you may be able to comment on this, based on your experience, but it was in the New York Times, it was one of their visual investigations, and it was about a fire in an apartment building, and the thing that I remember most is that they did this 3D sort of virtual model of the apartment building. And it was very odd in that it wasn't just a hallway with apartments off it. You would go into an apartment, and in some cases the apartments had been, made two floors, like I think retrofit is two floors, so you could go into an apartment and you'd be going downstairs, and now you were at the lower level, but there wasn't a door from that level into the hallway of that level. And also the apartments weren't just stacked one on top of the other. Sometimes, like the second floor of one apartment would be kind of like underneath the first floor of another apartment. Are you familiar with the scenario I'm describing?
[00:15:23] Thomas: I think those are probably the duplex apartments that you see in certain buildings, scattered, like, for example, throughout New York City, where, you go into an apartment and that apartment encompasses not only that floor, but conceivably an extension to rooms on the floor above, or in one case scenario, maybe a floor, the stairway goes to downwards, the sort of bottom, the floor below where the, perhaps the fire originated, and now you're obviously getting blasted with this smoke. The fire obviously burns and kills, but most of the deaths, most of the fatalities are really from smoke inhalation.
The experience of moving through smoke
[00:16:00] Thomas: You know, and that's why, both in firefighting and in writing, I always tried to give a lot of credence to smoke and that feeling of being encompassed. It's almost like crawling or walking on the bottom of the ocean, where, yeah, you can move around, but you can't see anything, and your environment is totally encapsulated in your feelings of what you can feel through your gloves.
And even to some extent the experience of wearing that mask over your face that you're breathing through makes you more myopic, because now you can actually hear your breaths as the diaphragm in this thing opens and closes, and if you start getting nervous, or you start really getting too physically involved in it, you can actually hear your breaths increasing in this diaphragm. So it's kind of like the kind of thing that anyone who's been in a fire as a firefighter would know, and it could translate very nicely, I think, in certain scenes that a writer might want to sit down and write about.
Tapping into all the senses
[00:17:04] Matty: I'm hoping I'm remembering the article correctly. I'm going to provide a link to this New York Times article because it was really... excellent. All their visual investigation articles are excellent, but I believe that was the article that also had, I think they had found a picture of one of the hallways from before the fire, and then they modified the photograph so it reflected what it would look like in the circumstances with the smoke, almost unrecognizable, you know, you could pick out tiny little things here and there, but, I think it's a really good illustration of exactly what you're saying, that, that sense of claustrophobia, that sense of, of, I think that idea of walking at the bottom of the ocean is an excellent analogy, that makes a lot of sense to me.
[00:17:46] Thomas: Yeah, I would say too that that post fire, when the fire is put out, the post fire sense of what it looks like, what it smells like, what it feels like, I don't know how easy it is for any author to get into a situation like that, but if you If you ever live near a building that burnt, most of the time you can't get in, but if you typically, let's say a mid-Manhattan high rise, if a person four or five or more stories below you has a fire, you're going to have a sense of that fire for days afterwards. the soot, the smell, you know, there is like a post fire experience that stays for a while that a person could incorporate into a storyline also.
So it's not only the fire. The fire most often, fortunately, gets knocked down fairly quickly. And then there are the important functions of searching for life, you know, overhauling the apartment to check for extension, things like that, and it is a very, one of the things I like about firefighting, I mean, I like writing because it's cerebral, and a writer is an observer, but I always was sort of a physical person, and I like the physicality of firefighting, I tried to describe in my writing what it felt like to handle tools to deal with the scent of tar and smoke and things like that, and even later as I became the chief and was the guy supervising and choreographing from the street, I kind of liked this sense of the physical challenge and the physical presence of smoke, water, tar, things like that. And, I think that's something that would be good for a writer to try to incorporate in a fire scene to make it, you know, more realistic. It's a very physical experience at the scene. But
[00:19:35] Matty: really like this idea that you're mentioning all these senses that can be involved, like the sound of the breathing apparatus. And, yeah, that's great. That's something. I think everybody goes to the, the visual aspect. And I think it's a great reminder not to, Stop there.
Creating a story without direct experience
[00:19:49] Thomas: My two initial books were based on my experience, because I knew New York City intimately, I knew firefighting and the FDNY intimately, and I wrote about what I personally experienced. But I am a great believer that a good writer can create characters, can create a storyline, based on something they've never experienced. You know, I believe that, but in a good example, he's kind of, the same thing over and over, but Tom Clancy, all right, probably has never been in combat, and yet he made a whole industry out of books that were intricately described, combat and how it would be in combat. And I guess, again, my hope would be that if I could just throw a few tidbits about the realities of fire, about the realities of what it's like to be in a building, about some of the misconceptions of the work that's involved.
Life in a firehouse
[00:20:44] Thomas: Yeah, a lot of it is routine, some of it's boring, you know, but there are those moments, it's kind of like this, moments of utter boredom to moments of utter panic, it goes up and down, and I think is, certainly typical of most of the urban departments, you And as you get away from the city, maybe as you get into the suburban areas, or certainly the rural areas, the fire incidents, the fire activity diminishes quite a bit, and I would think, not having worked in areas like that, that you'd have a lot of downtime, which could be good or bad, depending on your relationships, in that particular fire station, which is a whole, you know, another tangent to go on. If you're spending 24 hours with a group of people, well, there are a lot of interesting characters, in the fire department, and you can create a lot of interesting characters from that environment in your writing, and especially when it's compacted into a building where You live together, you eat together; you sleep together for 24 hours, sometimes there's really good connections made, sometimes there's a lot of banging of the heads going on.
And I think a lot of people, again, going back to that Hollywood syndrome, if you've had no connection with the fire department, and most writers I imagine have had little or no connection, you might be subject to that, well, traditionally a firefighter has a mustache, right, He wears suspenders and has, slides a pole and has a dalmatian. a lot of fire departments don't have poles. Very few dalmatians. Usually it's some butt that walked in off the street that adopted the house and they adopted him. Uh, it's different than the storybook thing. And you can create a fire scenario, a firehouse. And when we talk about the people who do it, characters who have depth, who have variety. It's not all like the typical what you see on television or the thing you read about or heard about when you were in the second grade.
[00:22:46] Matty: Well, I think that's a great entrée to one of the other things we wanted to talk about, which was, maybe these are overlapping. One is misconceptions about the people who choose firefighting, but also life in the firehouse. So, let's maybe talk about life in the firehouse. And I actually have to start out. Are there any poles? Is that actually a thing anywhere?
[00:23:03] Thomas: Yes, there are.
[00:23:04] Matty: Okay.
[00:23:05] Thomas: Absolutely. Some of the newer stations, I've read about are not having poles installed and their argument would be, it eliminates the risk of injury. I don't know if that's a great idea. Sliding poles really facilitates and speeds up firefighters’ response to emergency. And it's always a ticking clock. The sooner you can get there, the better off the operation is, the safer the people who are affected by it are, and aside from this, the tradition. You know, fire poles were invented, I think, in Chicago around the 1890s or thereabouts, and they were invented for a reason, okay? They found that it would facilitate by x number of seconds or whatever the statistic was, every response they went on.
I got to a point where, certainly as a firefighter, I worked in firehouses that often had three stories. So if you were doing something on the top story, maybe you're doing something at your locker or maybe you were fixing or doing some maintenance work or cleaning. That's another thing, a typical firehouse day, a lot of cleaning, all right? The bunks have to be made. It might be as many as 15 or more bunks. There's a lot of routine day-to-day work like that. So if you're on the third floor and a run comes in, you can grab a pole, slide down that to the second floor. Before you know it, you're sliding down to the first floor. That still exists. Most New York City firehouses still have that.
[00:24:32] Matty: Is it one pole from the third floor to the first floor? Or do you stop at the second floor?
[00:24:37] Thomas: That would be quite a ride.
[00:24:38] Matty: Yeah, that would be.
[00:24:40] Thomas: no, the poles would not extend more than one floor. The book floor may have two or three poles that would go to the floor below, which then would go to the first floor where the truck is. That being said, there is one of the older firehouses in New York City is on the Lower East Side. And, this firehouse has a tremendous, it's the highest ceiling in New York City. It's like 30 New York City firehouses. And I remember sliding. I worked briefly in that firehouse and sliding that pole. And that was an experience. I mean, you felt like you should bring your lunch or something.
[00:25:13] Thomas: So yeah, the poles are there. There are a lot of firehouses. Some of the newer firehouses, certainly any firehouse like in my area here, which has a volunteer department, it's one level. There are a lot of firefighters who never in their careers slide the pole. There's a reason for it. It does facilitate response. I personally, and most firefighters, almost forget about it after a while because it becomes so routine. But to be very honest, I enjoyed it. I mean, I, even when I got to a point where I was responding from the second floor as the chief, it wasn't as important that I get there immediately because the firefighters would arrive first; they were doing the physical work, even if they were, let's say they were serving lunch or something, I could walk down the stairs or I could slide the pole. I often slide the pole. I just like the experience, you know, of sliding down the pole.
So yeah, in answer to your question, they are still there. I even try to incorporate the feeling of sliding a pole into my writing because it was something that meant something to me. And if an author wants to have a character slide a pole, by all means do it, if you can imagine what it feels like. I tried to describe, there are different types of poles, the traditional shiny brass pole I like, you slid very quickly along this brass pole. And then the newer firehouses, they introduced a stainless-steel pole. And the difference was the stainless-steel pole was wider. It had a different feel. It didn't have that slick, traditional, shiny brass feel. And the sliding process didn't feel the same. I kind of described it as the brass pole welcomed your embrace and the stainless steel just kind of tolerated you for a couple of seconds.
[00:27:08] Matty: I love that description.
[00:27:10] Thomas: Yeah. So that the poles exist, there are different types. And if someone wants to incorporate a pole into their story, include that part of it, that's fine. They would certainly be realistic in doing that.
[00:27:23] Matty: Well, I think that the opportunity to try to convey that sense of fun, I mean, it almost sounds like that sense of fun that attracted you to using the pole, even when you could have used the stairs, would be fun to represent in the story. What are some other misconceptions about life in the firehouse that you see writers or screenwriters doing?
Tips for a realistic portrayal of firefighters
[00:27:43] Thomas: well, I don't really watch Uh, there are television shows that are fired. There's one, Chicago Fire. I don't watch any of them, but I caught about five minutes once, just out of curiosity and everybody is very well spoken. Everybody is kind of the same. They're Hollywood actors. They're incredibly pleasant. Handsome or beautiful, you know, there's, interaction that's almost predictable. The firehouses that I experienced, there are women in the fire service, there are women in the New York City Fire Department, they're still very much a minority at this point, there are very few women, there are a lot of men who have maybe never ever worked with a female firefighter. So that still creates and enables the typical firehouse environment, in my experience, to be a sort of a rough, tough, alpha male type of environment.
A guy I worked with and liked a lot made the analogy that a 24-hour tour in a New York City firehouse was almost like being in prison because we had to stay there for 24 hours. We wore the same clothes. We worked out with weights together. We ate the same meals together. And we always complained about the same things, you know. So the overall flavor of the firehouses, in my experience, has been kind of a loud, tough environment where if you can imagine a bunch of alpha males kind of competing for their ranking in this informal bureaucracy that's there.
Which is not to say that they're bad people. They're not. And it's not to say that they're bad people. There was not a tremendous variety of people, within that environment, because there were. The environment itself, if you basically are living in a version of a garage, the first floor would be the floor where the engine of a lot of companies is actually positioned. There's generally a small desk at front called the house watch desk where the person takes phone calls and handles the communication with the dispatcher. And the upstairs are lockers, offices, the bunk room.
But the walls, especially on the first floor, are generally a tile, like a white tile. And that kind of reverberates and amplifies all the noise that goes on in a firehouse. Firehouse can be a very noisy place. And part of that is the machinery, you know, testing out the equipment, all of that. But firefighters in general are very outspoken individuals, all right? You don't get a lot of subtleties. You'll get a fair amount of yelling, you know, and the noise of the equipment and the people, and the yelling, and the bells and the PA system, and the radio reports coming in, if you can imagine being in this environment for 24 hours, at least for me, it got to me after a while. We're to a point where it was, I liked being with the people I was with, but it was kind of a relief to get out of that noisy environment. So that's kind of the scenario.
Again, obviously, it really depends on the situation. There are some firehouses that are very quiet. There are some firehouses that have more than one unit assigned to it, and you have more people. I found sometimes that the really busy companies in the rundown areas of the city, there was a more of an informality of it because they did more work than, some of the companies in the nicer neighborhoods, and, that the noise would be comparable. You know, on the other hand, if you want to create an environment in your writing, in your storyline, of a sort of quiet, set off fire company where people sit around and discuss things at the kitchen table. Yeah, that could happen. That could happen also.
But I would say, just keep in mind the overall nature of firefighters, that they tend to be conservative people. And if they're going to have a political discussion at the kitchen table, which is really the focal point of the firehouse, the kitchen table. They're going to tend to be conservative, if they disagree, it's not likely to be with a lot of subtleties. There'll be some butting of the heads, that type of thing. So it's a very different experience than what you might see in the corporate world or the typical office building.
The hierarchy (official and unofficial) in the firehouse
[00:32:09] Matty: Well, I'm curious, can you describe a little bit, is there a hierarchy? I mean, I think we're all familiar with the concept of the fire chief. But are there, like you've made the analogy to prison. I originally thought you were going to go, that you would go with like being in the army, but it seems a little more democratic in both a good and bad way.
[00:32:32] Thomas: Well, typical firehouse, let's say, would have an officer on duty, could be the lieutenant or the captain, who's in charge of the tour, in charge of the personnel and the building for that, that particular tour, which, you know, could be 15 hours, could be 24 hours, depending on where you work. Firehouse in New York, again, would have an officer and four or five firefighters. If it were a house that had more than one company, you could have two or three officers, perhaps, it may be as many as 15 or 20 firefighters. And, there is a distinction between officer and firefighter, but it's not as rigid as in the army. All right, the New York City Fire Department is a quasi-military institution with the emphasis on quasi. So, yeah, if the officer tells you to do something, you're going to do it.
But within the ranks of firefighters themselves, there's sort of a rapidly established, how would you describe this, sort of chain of command in terms of you have the very newest person All right, the probationary firefighter who's first year, he has no experience or she has no experience, they come in, they are the lowest of the low, they are treated as such for a while until they are gradually accepted, and their job would be to keep their mouth shut, their eyes open, to keep constantly busy making the coffee, helping out here and there.
Then there are the real salty old veterans. This might be someone who has 25 or 30 years as a firefighter, and they are the senior person, most of the time, very well respected, okay, could have a variety of personalities. A lot of them would sort of just sit back and have their coffee and just watch things, you know, sort of as an informal supervisor. perhaps step up and teach and help some of the younger firefighters.
Some of the older guys, not many. But some were nasty. They were just nasty individuals that, for whatever reason, were not very helpful to new people, were very critical of new people. And then you have a lot of people in between, you know, who were just normal walking around Joes and Janes and they functioned and did their job. It is overall a blue-collar world. Many of the firefighters who work, at least in my experience, were from a blue-collar background. Many of them had relatives who had been firefighters, and, certainly my case, my dad also had been a New York City firefighter, which kind of, you know, even though I didn't know a lot about the job, definitely was an influence in my, doing what I did.
The variety of personalities who choose firefighting
[00:35:07] Thomas: That being said, there were, there is an amazing variety of people who choose this type of work, and I throw this out because if a writer wanted to introduce a character who maybe was different, who maybe didn't exactly fit in. All right, who maybe was sort of, you know, alienated by some of the things they were experiencing. Feel free to do it. For example, I worked with, over the course of my career, I worked with, a couple of actors. I worked with several lawyers, you know, guys who had gone through law school and were practicing law on the side. I worked with an architect. I worked with a couple of writers. Alright.
In fact, in my novel, one of my initial characters initially he was a minor character, was a would-be author. He was actually sort of a failed author and in my scenario, the way I set up the storyline, he was this guy who was, had illusions of being a New York Times bestseller. He was kind of out of most of the firehouse activity, was not especially liked. And over time, as the story evolves, he eventually changes and becomes a major player towards the end of the book. So, if an author wanted to introduce a typical person from a blue-collar background, by all means, do it, but don't be afraid to stretch that a little bit. Okay, there, there can be an amazing variety of people who do this type of work.
I worked with some of the most intelligent people I ever met in the fire department. You know, as I said, the architect, the actors, the lawyers, one of my firefighters, had been a jet fighter pilot in the Navy, I believe. So there's a lot of this going on, as far as, Leaving the door open to establish a character that you want to be in there. He doesn't have to be 6’ 4” and full of muscles. He or she could be five foot eight and maybe had been a, a tax lawyer, maybe still works on the side as a tax lawyer, maybe fits in with the mores and values of the firehouse, maybe feels like a total misfit. I would say feel free to play with that because you're not being unrealistic. There are a lot of different varieties, a lot of different things in terms of the type of people who do this type of work, even the quality of the individuals.
The motivation for many firefighters I worked with was simply, it was a job. It was a reliable civil service job. They were going to make an adequate salary, have medical coverage, and eventually a pension. That motivated a lot of people. Other people viewed it entirely differently. There were people who approached this job like it was the priesthood. You know, where they just viewed it as this commitment that they were going to make and perhaps their father and their grandfather made a totally different approach to the work. So the motivation was different. The reason for joining the fire department was different.
Even the, I hate to say, the morality of individuals could vary greatly. I actually worked with a firefighter who in fact eventually became a priest. I worked with another firefighter who eventually became a murderer. So again, don't be afraid to throw in something in describing or creating a character that might seem utterly ridiculous, because that person who does fit in or doesn't fit in will become a priest or a rabbi or a murderer. It's happened, you know, and you can create that character and that storyline and not totally divorce yourself for reality because these were the realities that I actually saw.
[00:39:00] Matty: I like that idea of understanding the common gestalt of the firehouse and then playing around with how different characters would react to that. Like I can imagine a young man or woman who is one of these kind of alpha personalities, going in and how difficult that would be for that person to be having to you know, be in their probationary period and having to be making the coffee and, mopping the floor, whatever, and maybe being mistreated by the old timers, that could be very interesting. Or someone who had, is going into it because they have a family history, but they're far from being the alpha type and how that might pan out. It, there are all sorts of interesting, Plotting and character development opportunities there with such a strong emotional background for it.
[00:39:48] Thomas: Just what you said there, that particular thing, if you are third generation, and your grandfather, your father were firefighters, and you're from an Irish section of Queens, New York, let's say, and the expectation is you're going to take the firefighters test, civil service test, and as soon as your number comes up, you're taking that job. And you do this because well on some level you didn't want to do it but this was kind of like the family it's almost like an arranged marriage and now you find yourself in a loud, aggressive environment where perhaps on your previous job you were treated as an equal and respected Now you're almost being yelled at, and your job is a probie, make the coffee, hey, make that bed, hey, remake that bed, and the bathrooms need mopping, you know, there's an ego check going on there, and I can see where a person, a character may have some issues with that, you know, something interesting to play with in a storyline.
[00:40:46] Matty: I think a common trope in crime fiction is the person who joins the fire department because they're a pyromaniac or they're an arsonist. And they either want to use that experience to learn how to perfect their unofficial profession or they just like the experience of being at the fire but maybe not for... Well, let me frame it up. I would think there would be people who would be attracted because they like to be around fires, and then there are people who want to become a firefighter because they like to help people, and then a whole spectrum combining those two. Can you comment about those, especially when writers use that trope of someone's joining the department for nefarious purposes?
[00:41:24] Thomas: I'm not going to say outright it doesn't happen. Because there, there certainly are recorded cases of where it did happen. I'm trying, I'm thinking of the title of a non-fiction book I read recently about a fire officer in California who did exactly that, you know, he was a fire officer; he was setting fires over and over again and eventually got caught, I don't like it only because, well, it certainly can exist and does exist, it seems kind of trite; it doesn't happen that often, and it's been done a few times. I almost get the sense that that would be a television movie, you know, rather than a good movie or a good novel. So I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying that realistically, does it happen often? Absolutely not. Could it happen? Yeah.
On the other hand, as I just said, there is a real variety of motivations for being a firefighter. And I suspect that... Well, I can talk in my case, to be brutally honest, it had nothing to do with family tradition. It wasn't like I was trying to save mankind. I joined for my own self-centered reasons. I had, at the time, a job that was boring the heck out of me, and out of the clear blue, the fire department offered me a job, and my attitude at the time was, that sounds pretty exciting. You know, I'm doing something that's very boring. This is a job that is completely off the scale, that I've, I'll never have a chance to do again. I went into it thinking, I'm going to do this for a year, just to have the experience of doing it, and then I'm going to move on with my life. And obviously, 33 years later that was my motivation, and certainly I loved it, and I'm glad I did it.
But you could have that motivation, you could have the simple motivation that I've got three kids, or four kids, or whatever, and I have to provide for them, and this is the most “secure,” ironically, it's a secure job in that sense, a very insecure job in another sense, in the safety sense, that might be your motivation, and yes, there are people like the fellow I work with who was a firefighter, left the fire department and became a priest. In fact, he even gave his pension to the priesthood.
So, you know, there are people who come in, for very high, other-directed type of reasons. a person can join for any reason. Could they join to gather information that would help them for criminal purposes? Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, if you have the arsonist point of view. There are people who have that, you know, affliction, and I can see where the fire department might be something of great interest to them. It has happened.
You're also placed in a position in the fire department where you will often be in areas that are secure areas that you shouldn't be in. You have to force an entry into a bank, into a shoe store, into some type of occupancy. Mid-Manhattan was loaded with places like this. I wound up in places in the middle of the night where I was surrounded by stacks of money. You know, you could join the fire department and be one of the world's greatest thieves if you have that motivation. So, your motivation, your character's motivation for being a firefighter could be a whole variety, a whole spectrum of reasons, and you can play with that to create a character who accomplishes a lot of positive stuff, right?
Or on the other hand, maybe accomplishes and does a lot of negative, negative stuff. You know, it's, you have free range with that, I think, as an author. And you're not going to be unrealistic if you create the bad guy. You know, obviously, you don't want a character, a cardboard character, but if you can create a bad guy with some depth, and there's a reason for him being that bad guy, as opposed to the good guy, Again with some depth who is a good guy because his dad or grandpa or whatever was this tremendous influence and he wants to live up to that expectation. That's kind of like the motivational aspect of it which leads, you know, into the character development.
[00:45:37] Matty: That's so great. Well, Tom, I could continue talking with you for hours about this topic, but, we need to wrap up, but I really appreciate you bringing both 33 years of experience as a firefighter, but also your experiences as an author. I think you had some really invaluable advice about how people can pull those two concepts together.
[00:45:54] Thomas: Again, thank you. Thank you for inviting me, and I hope that we threw out a couple of bones that might help a couple of the authors out there a little bit.
[00:46:02] Matty: I know we did. And please let everyone know where they can find out more about you and your work online.
[00:46:08] Thomas: Yeah, the best way to get in touch with me is through my website, www.chieftomdundunne.com. And, if you have questions, comments, complaints, I always return. That's the best way to get in touch with me, or to order the books, and I always return any emails. If you have specific questions about the fire service or, writing about the fire service, feel free to contact me.
[00:46:34] Matty: Great, thank you so much!
[00:46:35] Thomas: Thank you.
[00:00:05] Thomas: Morning, how are you doing, Matty?
[00:00:07] Matty: I'm doing great. Thank you.
Meet Chief Thomas Dunne
[00:00:08] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Thomas Dunn is a retired deputy chief and 33-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department with extensive experience working in mid-Manhattan and the Bronx, including acting as incident commander at hundreds of fires and emergencies in the city. Chief Dunn lectures at conferences and colleges across the country, has written numerous magazine articles, and serves as an adjunct instructor for the National Fire Academy and Keene University. He is also the author of Notes from the Underground, a memoir of his experiences with the FDNY and the novel A Moment in Time.
And I asked, Tom to be on the podcast because he had been very helpful to me with some questions I had about firefighting for my Ann Kinnear novel, Furnace for Your Foe, and I wanted to add his perspective to the Mistakes Writers Make series, sort of focused on prime writers. now we have amassed the mistakes writers make about firearms, police procedure, coroners, first responders, the FBI, PIs, forensic psychiatry, police roles, and bladed weapons, and how to avoid mistakes about those in your writing. And you can find links to all of those episodes at theindyauthor.com forward slash podcast, and then scroll down to Crime Fiction Writer, or you can also find them at the Indy Author YouTube channel on the playlist for Crime Writers.
And just as a side note, I have also added another YouTube playlist for short story writers, that is short fiction. So you can find all that information at my website and at my YouTube channel.
Misconceptions about firefighters' work
[00:01:34] Matty: And so, Tom, I wanted to start out talking about misconceptions that writers might have about the work that firefighters do. What do you see in writing that kind of makes you cringe as a professional firefighter?
[00:01:47] Thomas: Well, a couple of things. I mean, there's some real good stuff out there, but there's also, as you know, a lot of misconceptions, out in the world, out in the writing world, certainly in the movie industry, certainly on television shows. There are a number of shows now that are, I don't watch, that are, you know, not good shows, and there are a lot of misconceptions. But as you pointed out, 33 years as a firefighter and the last 20 years or so as a writer, or would be writer, I kind of have--
[00:02:14] Matty: an actual writer.
[00:02:16] Thomas: I guess at this point I could consider myself a writer.
[00:02:19] Matty: Yes, you can.
[00:02:20] Thomas: but I found myself in an interesting dichotomy in that one foot was in one world, one foot was in the other world, and they were two very different mindsets. in other words, the fire world was sort of a world of activity and action. The writer world, I think of a writer as an observer, and I tried to tie the two together as much as possible. So my hope would be that for the writers who tune into this, who have published or are anticipating writing, for the people who are at least considering writing, I would hope that maybe I could bring up one or two points that might give them a little more realistic approach to the world of emergency response, the world of firefighting, and the ability to create a variety of characters. # Firefighting is a small part of a firefighter’s job.
[00:03:08] Thomas: But you mentioned you wanted to start off with the work, I guess, I won't say illusions, but work misconceptions, and there certainly are a number out there. I think maybe, the first one is the concept that there are a lot of fires, and nationally and statistically there are, but realistically, if you're going to create a character or an imaginary firehouse or fire department as part of your storyline, there would probably be a mistake to introduce a story where they're going to fires like five, six, seven, eight times a night. It's not like that anymore.
That was the case in the so-called war years in New York City, where, for example, the South Bronx firefighters would go literally to 15 to 20 structural fires a night. Fortunately, it's no longer like that, in part because of the economy, in part because of fire prevention activities and things of that nature. Fire is the aspect of emergency response that seems to gather understandably all the attention. But in the last 20 years or so, certainly after 911, the fire department's responsibility and assignments are much broader.
So if you can picture a pie chart, which would constitute all the fire department's activities, in that pie chart, the firefighting would be a relatively small slice at this point. Largely, in urban areas, it might be different. The division I worked in, for example, covered, the Bronx and Manhattan, and over a 24-hour period, you did go to a lot of fires, but I would think it would be a little unrealistic to create a storyline, where somebody was going to a fire, like, every other hour. That just wouldn't happen.
[00:04:55] Matty: Can you talk a little bit about what constitutes the remainder of the pie outside of fighting fires?
[00:05:01] Thomas: a great deal of that, as I said, since 911, the fire department has picked up a lot of peripheral activity, all right? A lot of fire departments have assumed EMS responsibilities, which, you know, may constitute a third or more of the runs of the responses in parts of New York City or other fire departments. Hazardous materials, things of that nature, that are now... A lot of HAZMAT experts, a lot of HAZMAT incidents in the fire department, fire prevention activities, which are not, you know, again, if you want a realistic character, firefighters love going to fires. They love hands on challenges like that. You'll never have to motivate a firefighter. To do something out of fire. Things, the so-called soft areas like fire prevention activities, are not quite as popular, but that takes up a substantial part of any tour, typically.
Things like simple maintenance, you know, there's a great deal of maintenance that's required in the firehouse drill periods where the members of the fire department of that particular working that particular tour would sit down and drill something, which means a rehearsal of how to use a certain type of equipment, a rehearsal of What if situations? What if we had a fire in this type of building? What if we had a bus crash on the interstate? These scenarios, they review before it ever happens. So there's a lot of that going on.
In fact, there's a fair amount of downtime. In many fire departments. I got a, personally got a lot of reading in, mostly in the night tours. You know, during the day tours you kept pretty busy with responses, drill, maintenance, things of that nature. At nighttime, I went through a lot of novels. Had an ability to read a lot, especially since I stayed up most of the night and it was fairly exhausting, but you would do some reading, if you wanted, or studying for, advancement, things of that nature.
So I think maybe the first misconception, again, if someone out there is envisioning writing an imaginary fire department or creating a character, in a typical day by day, activity in that department, don't send them out the door 50 times for fire. That's not going to happen. # The variety of firefighter roles enables story and character depth
[00:07:09] Matty: I think that's good news for writers because even an exciting event like fighting a fire, if you just have a character doing that over and over again, even that would pall after a while. And I think it's actually good news for writers that there's this whole assortment of things a firefighter could be doing. And you could even bake in the idea that, okay, now I have to go to like, you know, the junior high and talk about fire prevention or something. And maybe the frustration that a firefighter would feel if that was what they were spending their day doing when what they really wanted to do was fight a fire.
[00:07:38] Thomas: Exactly. And then there's the frustration of the false alarm. a certain percentage of your responses, you go out the door and you have to be, you know, keyed up and mentally and emotionally prepared every time you go out, but a certain percentage, which will vary depending on where you work, will be for nothing.
For example, when I was a firefighter in mid-Manhattan, there are these mechanical alarm systems in just about every mid-Manhattan building. And they often malfunctioned, and especially, in the wintertime, it seemed to happen more often for whatever reason, and over a 24-hour, tour of duty, there are nights where we might have gone out 10 to 20 times, out the door, you know, lights and siren, all set for action, only to find out that it was, past. A defective alarm system. So there's that sense of frustration sometimes that, you know, there's a sense of wearing down over time when you go out the door a lot.
And certainly when you go out to a fire, you generally know, when you're actually going to do something real. Because, typically, you dispatch some basic dispatch information, and as you're responding, the dispatcher will contact the officer by the radio, so on the apparatus, the truck that you're responding on, you'll hear things like, sounds like you're going to work, fire in the top floor, sometimes you hear things like people are trapped, et cetera, et cetera, and now you're really geared for combat, so to speak, and, you know, you're going to do something real, something real. Fortunately, those are things that you certainly experience over a period of time, but they generally come every so often.
And that's in New York or any urban area, so you can imagine if your character lives or works in suburbia or a rural area. one of the things I always hear as I travel around the country, lecturing, especially to local firefighters, is that there's not enough fires. And that's bad for the fire department, but it's good for the people, but it's not unheard of for me to go to a small department somewhere, give them a lecture, and find out that nobody in that room has even been to a fire in six months, and they know you're from New York, and they envision it as, wow, I wish I was in New York. I should be going to fires every day.
So that's one of the misconceptions. What a typical tour of duty would involve, yes, absolutely. There'd be some firefighting, but it would not be as often as you might expect. There's a lot of peripheral stuff that is somewhat routine, somewhat tedious, you know, that might wear on you for a while.
Story opportunities involving false alarms
[00:10:11] Matty: that reminds me of a story. A couple of years ago, my husband and I were sitting on our porch, and we're, in an area, we're in a forested area that has a lot of, deer, and we're also right down the street from the fire station. And so we were sitting on the porch and we heard this thump, and then the screech of brakes, which seemed odd, but I thought, I bet that a deer ran out into the road; the car hit the deer before it even had a chance to brake, and then slammed on the brakes, and we were kind of trying to look through the trees, it was right down the street from us, you know, trying to see what was going on, and we weren't hearing any noises that made us think it was a big emergency, but I thought, I don't know, you know, if somebody's And I they might just be in the car.
And so I called up 911, and I described what had happened, thinking that they would just send somebody, like, send a police car or something to see if there was even anything going on. And pretty soon, I think they rolled every piece of equipment in the fire department. I think partially just because why not? And then I thought, oh, no, I'm going to get in trouble because I just called out the whole fire department. And then when I made the call, I had given my address, and so pretty soon, one of the guys, I can't remember if it was a firefighter or one of the police officers stopped, and, it was also embarrassing because my husband and I had been drinking wine, so I thought, oh great, they're going to show up and think I just called because, like, I was drunk or something.
But it was super nice, and, you know, I described again what I had heard, and he said, oh, we looked around, The car must have driven away, and we looked in all the ditches, we don't see a deer. But he was super nice about it, and I actually, then a couple of months later ran into the chief, and I described the scenario to him, and I kind of apologized, and he said, no, never apologize, because we would rather hear it than have someone think, oh, well, it's probably nothing, and not make the call. And the next day, I did find a deer in a ditch, so I felt vindicated.
[00:12:03] Thomas: Yeah. people will call in for all kinds of reasons. And, since most people, thankfully, have not actually experienced the fire, or perhaps are not familiar with, everything, in, that's peculiar to their area, or their apartment, or the city, people will call in for things that you look back on and you feel that was a ridiculous reason to call, but... You have to make the call.
Where there's fire, there's (almost) always smoke
[00:12:25] Thomas: And there's the other aspect, I like to call this the Hollywood syndrome. if you've been to any of the movies that came out over the last 20 or 30 years, and I really don't go to them. I saw one years ago. Understandably, Hollywood has a concept of what a fire should look like. And if you see a movie or perhaps an episode in one of these ongoing television serials about fire departments, typically it would be a room full of fire or a building with fire coming out of every conceivable window and no smoke at all. And, you see this over and over.
And nothing could be further from the realities. The realities are that certainly if you have a room full of fire in a typical building, you'll see fire pushing out that window. When you go inside a building, very often you don't see anything. Especially if you're sent to the floors above to do a search for life and see if anyone's been trapped up there, it's really an almost claustrophobic, blinding type of experience where they often say you can't see your hand in front of your face, and that's exactly it. You have a, a face piece on that you're breathing through, so you're kind of very myopic in your outlook. You can't see anything. You're going around almost like with braille. You're feeling your way for security. If you are going down, let's say, the length of an apartment, you typically would keep one hand, maybe your left hand or your right hand, depending on the layout, on the wall, because you can't see anything, and that is your way out.
So, I would say to anyone, again, who wants to, create a realistic fire scene in, in their storyline, yeah, absolutely, it has to be fire, all right, perhaps there's some heat, if you're feeling that in the hallway, or certainly in the floors above, but to make it realistic, I would definitely incorporate The smoke aspect of it, because that's, more than anything, that, that is what's going to overwhelm you at a fire.
[00:14:32] Matty: A really interesting resource, and you may be able to comment on this, based on your experience, but it was in the New York Times, it was one of their visual investigations, and it was about a fire in an apartment building, and the thing that I remember most is that they did this 3D sort of virtual model of the apartment building. And it was very odd in that it wasn't just a hallway with apartments off it. You would go into an apartment, and in some cases the apartments had been, made two floors, like I think retrofit is two floors, so you could go into an apartment and you'd be going downstairs, and now you were at the lower level, but there wasn't a door from that level into the hallway of that level. And also the apartments weren't just stacked one on top of the other. Sometimes, like the second floor of one apartment would be kind of like underneath the first floor of another apartment. Are you familiar with the scenario I'm describing?
[00:15:23] Thomas: I think those are probably the duplex apartments that you see in certain buildings, scattered, like, for example, throughout New York City, where, you go into an apartment and that apartment encompasses not only that floor, but conceivably an extension to rooms on the floor above, or in one case scenario, maybe a floor, the stairway goes to downwards, the sort of bottom, the floor below where the, perhaps the fire originated, and now you're obviously getting blasted with this smoke. The fire obviously burns and kills, but most of the deaths, most of the fatalities are really from smoke inhalation.
The experience of moving through smoke
[00:16:00] Thomas: You know, and that's why, both in firefighting and in writing, I always tried to give a lot of credence to smoke and that feeling of being encompassed. It's almost like crawling or walking on the bottom of the ocean, where, yeah, you can move around, but you can't see anything, and your environment is totally encapsulated in your feelings of what you can feel through your gloves.
And even to some extent the experience of wearing that mask over your face that you're breathing through makes you more myopic, because now you can actually hear your breaths as the diaphragm in this thing opens and closes, and if you start getting nervous, or you start really getting too physically involved in it, you can actually hear your breaths increasing in this diaphragm. So it's kind of like the kind of thing that anyone who's been in a fire as a firefighter would know, and it could translate very nicely, I think, in certain scenes that a writer might want to sit down and write about.
Tapping into all the senses
[00:17:04] Matty: I'm hoping I'm remembering the article correctly. I'm going to provide a link to this New York Times article because it was really... excellent. All their visual investigation articles are excellent, but I believe that was the article that also had, I think they had found a picture of one of the hallways from before the fire, and then they modified the photograph so it reflected what it would look like in the circumstances with the smoke, almost unrecognizable, you know, you could pick out tiny little things here and there, but, I think it's a really good illustration of exactly what you're saying, that, that sense of claustrophobia, that sense of, of, I think that idea of walking at the bottom of the ocean is an excellent analogy, that makes a lot of sense to me.
[00:17:46] Thomas: Yeah, I would say too that that post fire, when the fire is put out, the post fire sense of what it looks like, what it smells like, what it feels like, I don't know how easy it is for any author to get into a situation like that, but if you If you ever live near a building that burnt, most of the time you can't get in, but if you typically, let's say a mid-Manhattan high rise, if a person four or five or more stories below you has a fire, you're going to have a sense of that fire for days afterwards. the soot, the smell, you know, there is like a post fire experience that stays for a while that a person could incorporate into a storyline also.
So it's not only the fire. The fire most often, fortunately, gets knocked down fairly quickly. And then there are the important functions of searching for life, you know, overhauling the apartment to check for extension, things like that, and it is a very, one of the things I like about firefighting, I mean, I like writing because it's cerebral, and a writer is an observer, but I always was sort of a physical person, and I like the physicality of firefighting, I tried to describe in my writing what it felt like to handle tools to deal with the scent of tar and smoke and things like that, and even later as I became the chief and was the guy supervising and choreographing from the street, I kind of liked this sense of the physical challenge and the physical presence of smoke, water, tar, things like that. And, I think that's something that would be good for a writer to try to incorporate in a fire scene to make it, you know, more realistic. It's a very physical experience at the scene. But
[00:19:35] Matty: really like this idea that you're mentioning all these senses that can be involved, like the sound of the breathing apparatus. And, yeah, that's great. That's something. I think everybody goes to the, the visual aspect. And I think it's a great reminder not to, Stop there.
Creating a story without direct experience
[00:19:49] Thomas: My two initial books were based on my experience, because I knew New York City intimately, I knew firefighting and the FDNY intimately, and I wrote about what I personally experienced. But I am a great believer that a good writer can create characters, can create a storyline, based on something they've never experienced. You know, I believe that, but in a good example, he's kind of, the same thing over and over, but Tom Clancy, all right, probably has never been in combat, and yet he made a whole industry out of books that were intricately described, combat and how it would be in combat. And I guess, again, my hope would be that if I could just throw a few tidbits about the realities of fire, about the realities of what it's like to be in a building, about some of the misconceptions of the work that's involved.
Life in a firehouse
[00:20:44] Thomas: Yeah, a lot of it is routine, some of it's boring, you know, but there are those moments, it's kind of like this, moments of utter boredom to moments of utter panic, it goes up and down, and I think is, certainly typical of most of the urban departments, you And as you get away from the city, maybe as you get into the suburban areas, or certainly the rural areas, the fire incidents, the fire activity diminishes quite a bit, and I would think, not having worked in areas like that, that you'd have a lot of downtime, which could be good or bad, depending on your relationships, in that particular fire station, which is a whole, you know, another tangent to go on. If you're spending 24 hours with a group of people, well, there are a lot of interesting characters, in the fire department, and you can create a lot of interesting characters from that environment in your writing, and especially when it's compacted into a building where You live together, you eat together; you sleep together for 24 hours, sometimes there's really good connections made, sometimes there's a lot of banging of the heads going on.
And I think a lot of people, again, going back to that Hollywood syndrome, if you've had no connection with the fire department, and most writers I imagine have had little or no connection, you might be subject to that, well, traditionally a firefighter has a mustache, right, He wears suspenders and has, slides a pole and has a dalmatian. a lot of fire departments don't have poles. Very few dalmatians. Usually it's some butt that walked in off the street that adopted the house and they adopted him. Uh, it's different than the storybook thing. And you can create a fire scenario, a firehouse. And when we talk about the people who do it, characters who have depth, who have variety. It's not all like the typical what you see on television or the thing you read about or heard about when you were in the second grade.
[00:22:46] Matty: Well, I think that's a great entrée to one of the other things we wanted to talk about, which was, maybe these are overlapping. One is misconceptions about the people who choose firefighting, but also life in the firehouse. So, let's maybe talk about life in the firehouse. And I actually have to start out. Are there any poles? Is that actually a thing anywhere?
[00:23:03] Thomas: Yes, there are.
[00:23:04] Matty: Okay.
[00:23:05] Thomas: Absolutely. Some of the newer stations, I've read about are not having poles installed and their argument would be, it eliminates the risk of injury. I don't know if that's a great idea. Sliding poles really facilitates and speeds up firefighters’ response to emergency. And it's always a ticking clock. The sooner you can get there, the better off the operation is, the safer the people who are affected by it are, and aside from this, the tradition. You know, fire poles were invented, I think, in Chicago around the 1890s or thereabouts, and they were invented for a reason, okay? They found that it would facilitate by x number of seconds or whatever the statistic was, every response they went on.
I got to a point where, certainly as a firefighter, I worked in firehouses that often had three stories. So if you were doing something on the top story, maybe you're doing something at your locker or maybe you were fixing or doing some maintenance work or cleaning. That's another thing, a typical firehouse day, a lot of cleaning, all right? The bunks have to be made. It might be as many as 15 or more bunks. There's a lot of routine day-to-day work like that. So if you're on the third floor and a run comes in, you can grab a pole, slide down that to the second floor. Before you know it, you're sliding down to the first floor. That still exists. Most New York City firehouses still have that.
[00:24:32] Matty: Is it one pole from the third floor to the first floor? Or do you stop at the second floor?
[00:24:37] Thomas: That would be quite a ride.
[00:24:38] Matty: Yeah, that would be.
[00:24:40] Thomas: no, the poles would not extend more than one floor. The book floor may have two or three poles that would go to the floor below, which then would go to the first floor where the truck is. That being said, there is one of the older firehouses in New York City is on the Lower East Side. And, this firehouse has a tremendous, it's the highest ceiling in New York City. It's like 30 New York City firehouses. And I remember sliding. I worked briefly in that firehouse and sliding that pole. And that was an experience. I mean, you felt like you should bring your lunch or something.
[00:25:13] Thomas: So yeah, the poles are there. There are a lot of firehouses. Some of the newer firehouses, certainly any firehouse like in my area here, which has a volunteer department, it's one level. There are a lot of firefighters who never in their careers slide the pole. There's a reason for it. It does facilitate response. I personally, and most firefighters, almost forget about it after a while because it becomes so routine. But to be very honest, I enjoyed it. I mean, I, even when I got to a point where I was responding from the second floor as the chief, it wasn't as important that I get there immediately because the firefighters would arrive first; they were doing the physical work, even if they were, let's say they were serving lunch or something, I could walk down the stairs or I could slide the pole. I often slide the pole. I just like the experience, you know, of sliding down the pole.
So yeah, in answer to your question, they are still there. I even try to incorporate the feeling of sliding a pole into my writing because it was something that meant something to me. And if an author wants to have a character slide a pole, by all means do it, if you can imagine what it feels like. I tried to describe, there are different types of poles, the traditional shiny brass pole I like, you slid very quickly along this brass pole. And then the newer firehouses, they introduced a stainless-steel pole. And the difference was the stainless-steel pole was wider. It had a different feel. It didn't have that slick, traditional, shiny brass feel. And the sliding process didn't feel the same. I kind of described it as the brass pole welcomed your embrace and the stainless steel just kind of tolerated you for a couple of seconds.
[00:27:08] Matty: I love that description.
[00:27:10] Thomas: Yeah. So that the poles exist, there are different types. And if someone wants to incorporate a pole into their story, include that part of it, that's fine. They would certainly be realistic in doing that.
[00:27:23] Matty: Well, I think that the opportunity to try to convey that sense of fun, I mean, it almost sounds like that sense of fun that attracted you to using the pole, even when you could have used the stairs, would be fun to represent in the story. What are some other misconceptions about life in the firehouse that you see writers or screenwriters doing?
Tips for a realistic portrayal of firefighters
[00:27:43] Thomas: well, I don't really watch Uh, there are television shows that are fired. There's one, Chicago Fire. I don't watch any of them, but I caught about five minutes once, just out of curiosity and everybody is very well spoken. Everybody is kind of the same. They're Hollywood actors. They're incredibly pleasant. Handsome or beautiful, you know, there's, interaction that's almost predictable. The firehouses that I experienced, there are women in the fire service, there are women in the New York City Fire Department, they're still very much a minority at this point, there are very few women, there are a lot of men who have maybe never ever worked with a female firefighter. So that still creates and enables the typical firehouse environment, in my experience, to be a sort of a rough, tough, alpha male type of environment.
A guy I worked with and liked a lot made the analogy that a 24-hour tour in a New York City firehouse was almost like being in prison because we had to stay there for 24 hours. We wore the same clothes. We worked out with weights together. We ate the same meals together. And we always complained about the same things, you know. So the overall flavor of the firehouses, in my experience, has been kind of a loud, tough environment where if you can imagine a bunch of alpha males kind of competing for their ranking in this informal bureaucracy that's there.
Which is not to say that they're bad people. They're not. And it's not to say that they're bad people. There was not a tremendous variety of people, within that environment, because there were. The environment itself, if you basically are living in a version of a garage, the first floor would be the floor where the engine of a lot of companies is actually positioned. There's generally a small desk at front called the house watch desk where the person takes phone calls and handles the communication with the dispatcher. And the upstairs are lockers, offices, the bunk room.
But the walls, especially on the first floor, are generally a tile, like a white tile. And that kind of reverberates and amplifies all the noise that goes on in a firehouse. Firehouse can be a very noisy place. And part of that is the machinery, you know, testing out the equipment, all of that. But firefighters in general are very outspoken individuals, all right? You don't get a lot of subtleties. You'll get a fair amount of yelling, you know, and the noise of the equipment and the people, and the yelling, and the bells and the PA system, and the radio reports coming in, if you can imagine being in this environment for 24 hours, at least for me, it got to me after a while. We're to a point where it was, I liked being with the people I was with, but it was kind of a relief to get out of that noisy environment. So that's kind of the scenario.
Again, obviously, it really depends on the situation. There are some firehouses that are very quiet. There are some firehouses that have more than one unit assigned to it, and you have more people. I found sometimes that the really busy companies in the rundown areas of the city, there was a more of an informality of it because they did more work than, some of the companies in the nicer neighborhoods, and, that the noise would be comparable. You know, on the other hand, if you want to create an environment in your writing, in your storyline, of a sort of quiet, set off fire company where people sit around and discuss things at the kitchen table. Yeah, that could happen. That could happen also.
But I would say, just keep in mind the overall nature of firefighters, that they tend to be conservative people. And if they're going to have a political discussion at the kitchen table, which is really the focal point of the firehouse, the kitchen table. They're going to tend to be conservative, if they disagree, it's not likely to be with a lot of subtleties. There'll be some butting of the heads, that type of thing. So it's a very different experience than what you might see in the corporate world or the typical office building.
The hierarchy (official and unofficial) in the firehouse
[00:32:09] Matty: Well, I'm curious, can you describe a little bit, is there a hierarchy? I mean, I think we're all familiar with the concept of the fire chief. But are there, like you've made the analogy to prison. I originally thought you were going to go, that you would go with like being in the army, but it seems a little more democratic in both a good and bad way.
[00:32:32] Thomas: Well, typical firehouse, let's say, would have an officer on duty, could be the lieutenant or the captain, who's in charge of the tour, in charge of the personnel and the building for that, that particular tour, which, you know, could be 15 hours, could be 24 hours, depending on where you work. Firehouse in New York, again, would have an officer and four or five firefighters. If it were a house that had more than one company, you could have two or three officers, perhaps, it may be as many as 15 or 20 firefighters. And, there is a distinction between officer and firefighter, but it's not as rigid as in the army. All right, the New York City Fire Department is a quasi-military institution with the emphasis on quasi. So, yeah, if the officer tells you to do something, you're going to do it.
But within the ranks of firefighters themselves, there's sort of a rapidly established, how would you describe this, sort of chain of command in terms of you have the very newest person All right, the probationary firefighter who's first year, he has no experience or she has no experience, they come in, they are the lowest of the low, they are treated as such for a while until they are gradually accepted, and their job would be to keep their mouth shut, their eyes open, to keep constantly busy making the coffee, helping out here and there.
Then there are the real salty old veterans. This might be someone who has 25 or 30 years as a firefighter, and they are the senior person, most of the time, very well respected, okay, could have a variety of personalities. A lot of them would sort of just sit back and have their coffee and just watch things, you know, sort of as an informal supervisor. perhaps step up and teach and help some of the younger firefighters.
Some of the older guys, not many. But some were nasty. They were just nasty individuals that, for whatever reason, were not very helpful to new people, were very critical of new people. And then you have a lot of people in between, you know, who were just normal walking around Joes and Janes and they functioned and did their job. It is overall a blue-collar world. Many of the firefighters who work, at least in my experience, were from a blue-collar background. Many of them had relatives who had been firefighters, and, certainly my case, my dad also had been a New York City firefighter, which kind of, you know, even though I didn't know a lot about the job, definitely was an influence in my, doing what I did.
The variety of personalities who choose firefighting
[00:35:07] Thomas: That being said, there were, there is an amazing variety of people who choose this type of work, and I throw this out because if a writer wanted to introduce a character who maybe was different, who maybe didn't exactly fit in. All right, who maybe was sort of, you know, alienated by some of the things they were experiencing. Feel free to do it. For example, I worked with, over the course of my career, I worked with, a couple of actors. I worked with several lawyers, you know, guys who had gone through law school and were practicing law on the side. I worked with an architect. I worked with a couple of writers. Alright.
In fact, in my novel, one of my initial characters initially he was a minor character, was a would-be author. He was actually sort of a failed author and in my scenario, the way I set up the storyline, he was this guy who was, had illusions of being a New York Times bestseller. He was kind of out of most of the firehouse activity, was not especially liked. And over time, as the story evolves, he eventually changes and becomes a major player towards the end of the book. So, if an author wanted to introduce a typical person from a blue-collar background, by all means, do it, but don't be afraid to stretch that a little bit. Okay, there, there can be an amazing variety of people who do this type of work.
I worked with some of the most intelligent people I ever met in the fire department. You know, as I said, the architect, the actors, the lawyers, one of my firefighters, had been a jet fighter pilot in the Navy, I believe. So there's a lot of this going on, as far as, Leaving the door open to establish a character that you want to be in there. He doesn't have to be 6’ 4” and full of muscles. He or she could be five foot eight and maybe had been a, a tax lawyer, maybe still works on the side as a tax lawyer, maybe fits in with the mores and values of the firehouse, maybe feels like a total misfit. I would say feel free to play with that because you're not being unrealistic. There are a lot of different varieties, a lot of different things in terms of the type of people who do this type of work, even the quality of the individuals.
The motivation for many firefighters I worked with was simply, it was a job. It was a reliable civil service job. They were going to make an adequate salary, have medical coverage, and eventually a pension. That motivated a lot of people. Other people viewed it entirely differently. There were people who approached this job like it was the priesthood. You know, where they just viewed it as this commitment that they were going to make and perhaps their father and their grandfather made a totally different approach to the work. So the motivation was different. The reason for joining the fire department was different.
Even the, I hate to say, the morality of individuals could vary greatly. I actually worked with a firefighter who in fact eventually became a priest. I worked with another firefighter who eventually became a murderer. So again, don't be afraid to throw in something in describing or creating a character that might seem utterly ridiculous, because that person who does fit in or doesn't fit in will become a priest or a rabbi or a murderer. It's happened, you know, and you can create that character and that storyline and not totally divorce yourself for reality because these were the realities that I actually saw.
[00:39:00] Matty: I like that idea of understanding the common gestalt of the firehouse and then playing around with how different characters would react to that. Like I can imagine a young man or woman who is one of these kind of alpha personalities, going in and how difficult that would be for that person to be having to you know, be in their probationary period and having to be making the coffee and, mopping the floor, whatever, and maybe being mistreated by the old timers, that could be very interesting. Or someone who had, is going into it because they have a family history, but they're far from being the alpha type and how that might pan out. It, there are all sorts of interesting, Plotting and character development opportunities there with such a strong emotional background for it.
[00:39:48] Thomas: Just what you said there, that particular thing, if you are third generation, and your grandfather, your father were firefighters, and you're from an Irish section of Queens, New York, let's say, and the expectation is you're going to take the firefighters test, civil service test, and as soon as your number comes up, you're taking that job. And you do this because well on some level you didn't want to do it but this was kind of like the family it's almost like an arranged marriage and now you find yourself in a loud, aggressive environment where perhaps on your previous job you were treated as an equal and respected Now you're almost being yelled at, and your job is a probie, make the coffee, hey, make that bed, hey, remake that bed, and the bathrooms need mopping, you know, there's an ego check going on there, and I can see where a person, a character may have some issues with that, you know, something interesting to play with in a storyline.
[00:40:46] Matty: I think a common trope in crime fiction is the person who joins the fire department because they're a pyromaniac or they're an arsonist. And they either want to use that experience to learn how to perfect their unofficial profession or they just like the experience of being at the fire but maybe not for... Well, let me frame it up. I would think there would be people who would be attracted because they like to be around fires, and then there are people who want to become a firefighter because they like to help people, and then a whole spectrum combining those two. Can you comment about those, especially when writers use that trope of someone's joining the department for nefarious purposes?
[00:41:24] Thomas: I'm not going to say outright it doesn't happen. Because there, there certainly are recorded cases of where it did happen. I'm trying, I'm thinking of the title of a non-fiction book I read recently about a fire officer in California who did exactly that, you know, he was a fire officer; he was setting fires over and over again and eventually got caught, I don't like it only because, well, it certainly can exist and does exist, it seems kind of trite; it doesn't happen that often, and it's been done a few times. I almost get the sense that that would be a television movie, you know, rather than a good movie or a good novel. So I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying that realistically, does it happen often? Absolutely not. Could it happen? Yeah.
On the other hand, as I just said, there is a real variety of motivations for being a firefighter. And I suspect that... Well, I can talk in my case, to be brutally honest, it had nothing to do with family tradition. It wasn't like I was trying to save mankind. I joined for my own self-centered reasons. I had, at the time, a job that was boring the heck out of me, and out of the clear blue, the fire department offered me a job, and my attitude at the time was, that sounds pretty exciting. You know, I'm doing something that's very boring. This is a job that is completely off the scale, that I've, I'll never have a chance to do again. I went into it thinking, I'm going to do this for a year, just to have the experience of doing it, and then I'm going to move on with my life. And obviously, 33 years later that was my motivation, and certainly I loved it, and I'm glad I did it.
But you could have that motivation, you could have the simple motivation that I've got three kids, or four kids, or whatever, and I have to provide for them, and this is the most “secure,” ironically, it's a secure job in that sense, a very insecure job in another sense, in the safety sense, that might be your motivation, and yes, there are people like the fellow I work with who was a firefighter, left the fire department and became a priest. In fact, he even gave his pension to the priesthood.
So, you know, there are people who come in, for very high, other-directed type of reasons. a person can join for any reason. Could they join to gather information that would help them for criminal purposes? Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, if you have the arsonist point of view. There are people who have that, you know, affliction, and I can see where the fire department might be something of great interest to them. It has happened.
You're also placed in a position in the fire department where you will often be in areas that are secure areas that you shouldn't be in. You have to force an entry into a bank, into a shoe store, into some type of occupancy. Mid-Manhattan was loaded with places like this. I wound up in places in the middle of the night where I was surrounded by stacks of money. You know, you could join the fire department and be one of the world's greatest thieves if you have that motivation. So, your motivation, your character's motivation for being a firefighter could be a whole variety, a whole spectrum of reasons, and you can play with that to create a character who accomplishes a lot of positive stuff, right?
Or on the other hand, maybe accomplishes and does a lot of negative, negative stuff. You know, it's, you have free range with that, I think, as an author. And you're not going to be unrealistic if you create the bad guy. You know, obviously, you don't want a character, a cardboard character, but if you can create a bad guy with some depth, and there's a reason for him being that bad guy, as opposed to the good guy, Again with some depth who is a good guy because his dad or grandpa or whatever was this tremendous influence and he wants to live up to that expectation. That's kind of like the motivational aspect of it which leads, you know, into the character development.
[00:45:37] Matty: That's so great. Well, Tom, I could continue talking with you for hours about this topic, but, we need to wrap up, but I really appreciate you bringing both 33 years of experience as a firefighter, but also your experiences as an author. I think you had some really invaluable advice about how people can pull those two concepts together.
[00:45:54] Thomas: Again, thank you. Thank you for inviting me, and I hope that we threw out a couple of bones that might help a couple of the authors out there a little bit.
[00:46:02] Matty: I know we did. And please let everyone know where they can find out more about you and your work online.
[00:46:08] Thomas: Yeah, the best way to get in touch with me is through my website, www.chieftomdundunne.com. And, if you have questions, comments, complaints, I always return. That's the best way to get in touch with me, or to order the books, and I always return any emails. If you have specific questions about the fire service or, writing about the fire service, feel free to contact me.
[00:46:34] Matty: Great, thank you so much!
[00:46:35] Thomas: Thank you.
