Steve Chikerotis to Receive 2024 Tom Brennan Lifetime Achievement Award
Deputy District Chief (Ret.) Steve Chikerotis of the Chicago (IL) Fire Department is the recipient of the 2024 Tom Brennan Lifetime Achievement Award.
Tom Brennan
The Latest
Battalion ‘Assignment’ System
Personnel, people working on-shift, could not be unbalanced within the neighborhood (battalion) in which you were assigned.
THOSE FIRST DAYS ON THE JOB: ANYTHING BUT ROUTINE, PART 1
“I can’t believe how easy it was to get to this roof,” my mind meandered as I “popped” out of the scuttle to the roof adjoining the fire building.
A FEW “HISTORICAL” MOMENTS
Working for Captain Nolan was like working for an historical figure named Florian1—a great firefighter, an officer, a teacher, a leader, and a saint.
More Tom Brennan
TALES FROM TRUCK 111
111 Truck. One-Eleven in the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) was another truly unique place in which I was fortunate to have worked and skippered during my too-short career.
IN THE BEGINNING
My father and my grandfather were firefighters. Both were a product of old traditional Irish heritage when it came to family.
FIRE ENGINEERING MOURNS LOSS OF TOM BRENNAN
It is with great sadness that Fire Engineering announces the loss of its former editor and technical editor Tom Brennan at the age of 66. Brennan, for all his seriousness and intensity when it came to safe "commonsense" and "simple" effective firefighting had a keen sense of humor and the gift of being the "life of the party."Donation information is pending.
SAFETY, PART 2
We were talking about safe operations for responding and returning, and perhaps we should visit there for a little longer (a term I stole from my recently retiring friend in the West).
Safety
Most of you who know me understand that I am usually not impressed with statistics that seem to support an exciting or excitable subject that follows them “first shot out of the bag.” Those numbers and matched data were planned to do just that. “Figures lie and liars figure,” is an old adage from a college statistics course from my early days.
STRATEGY IS NOT A STAND-ALONE CONCEPT
I reserved this space in this mag- azine 20 years ago to hang out with you and “shoot the breeze” about one predominant subject, operations-responding to, operating at, and (most important) returning from fires and other related emergencies threatening our core of service: to protect the lives, property, and environment of those we promised to serve.
STILL TALKIN’ IN THE KITCHEN ….
We have been talking (at least I was), about those tactics, tasks, and procedures that occur on most well-trained operations that support aggressive structure firefighting.
RECRUIT ORIENTATION
Editor’s note: Here is “The Best of Brennan,” a column of Tom Brennan’s that appeared in the October 1988 issue and that still rings true today.