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PODCAST

Firefighter Podcast

The Firefighters Podcast is an award winning global podcast developing, inspiring, connecting, motivating & celebrating the world of our emergency services operators through a series of wide-ranging conversations with those within our emergency services family.Hosted by serving operational UK firefighter & Instructor Pete Wakefield who speaks with individuals from all walks of life who share a connection with, can add value to, or can develop those within the fire sector.Our driving purpose

education self-improvement

All Episodes

172:10

#447 Hard Things, Endurance & Bum Butter - an...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/02/16

In this episode, I sit down with Scott Butler, a serving UK firefighter who has quietly built a life around choosing difficult things on purpose. Scott shares the pivotal moment in 2006 when joining the fire service forced him to grow fast, take responsibility, and stop making excuses. That turning point shaped not just his career, but his identity, and set him on a path where challenge became a way of understanding himself rather than something to avoid.Our conversation goes far beyond adventure

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9:36

#446 Debrief: Bethnal Green, London, July 20th 2004

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/02/12

This short debrief episode examines the Bethnal Green Road fire of 20 July 2004, a commercial premises fire in East London that resulted in the deaths of two London firefighters, Billy Faust and Adam Meere. Crews attended what initially presented as a working shop fire and committed under Breathing Apparatus into a basement environment characterised by heavy textile fuel loading, restricted access, and limited ventilation.This episode focuses on exploring how fire behaviour can change when

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102:49

#445 Managers Enforce Rules, Leaders Enforce Values...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/02/09

I sit down with Chris Case, a firefighter who spent 25 years in Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service before making the leap to Canada and becoming Fire Chief of Chatham-Kent in Ontario.This is not a career-timeline conversation. It is a deep exploration of leadership, identity, and the personal cost of doing complex work in complex systems.We talk about moving beyond the cookie-cutter career, the curse of competence, and what happens when professionalism becomes a golden cage. Chris shares hard-won

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16:56

#444 Debrief: Old Albert Mill, Whitworth, Lancashire,...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/02/05

On this episode of we take a slow, deliberate look at the Old Albert Mill incident in Whitworth, Lancashire, from 15 May 2009. This is a structured incident debrief built directly from the original accident investigation report, with large sections read verbatim to preserve timings, context, and operational reality. The focus is not on blame or judgement, but on understanding how breathing apparatus operations, withdrawal under pressure, low visibility movement, and training culture intersected

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64:17

#443 FireSport UK Festival of Fire Sport with Chief...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/02/02

In this episode, I’m joined by Chris Kirby, Chief Fire Officer of South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service and Chair of FireSport UK, to talk about why bringing sport back matters right now. We focus on the Festival of Fire Sport and how FireSport UK is using sport to reconnect firefighters through teamwork, competition, and shared experience, not just fitness for fitness’ sake.We explore how sport builds trust, resilience, and identity across the fire service, why earning your place alongside your

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59:48

#442 Boots on the Ground at Intersec Dubai: A...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/29

This episode is a grounded debrief from being boots on the ground at Intersec Dubai, not a second hand summary or a glossy highlight reel. Intersec matters because it shows where global investment, policy attention, and operational thinking are actually heading long before those ideas trickle into day to day firefighting. From advanced PPE and industrial scale suppression systems to drones designed to integrate directly into command structures, the show sits at the intersection of technology,...

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65:42

#441 Beyond the Minimum Standard: The UK Firefighter...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/26

This episode kicks off a new series of conversations exploring the British Firefighter Challenge Series, a nationwide circuit made up of thirteen events running from April through to September 2026. From stair runs and regional challenges to the crown jewel event at Moreton-in-Marsh and an international 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb in the United States, the series represents a growing movement within the UK fire service that brings together fitness, teamwork, community engagement, and professionalism

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35:15

#440 Debrief 3 floor residential Fire Massachusetts...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/22

On November 13, 2019, a career lieutenant died, and four other firefighters were injured while fighting a residential structure fire. What began as a seemingly routine night-time call rapidly escalated into a complex, high-risk incident involving crews operating above the fire, deteriorating conditions, wind-impacted fire behaviour, and critical information gaps. Early reports of life risk shaped decision making, while building construction, access limitations, and changing fire dynamics steadily

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106:06

#439 The Job, the Life & Everything in Between with...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/19

This episode is one of those conversations that quietly gets under your skin.I’m joined by Matt Akers, who currently serves in New Zealand, but whose journey through the fire service spans rural retained firefighting, aviation, London, and multiple countries. Matt’s lived and worked across very different systems, cultures, and tempos of the job, and that perspective runs all the way through this conversation.What we really dig into though isn’t tactics or titles. It’s life. The pressure to stay

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31:09

#438 Debrief Camp fire Paradise, California, USA,...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/15

In this episode, we take a deep, no-nonsense operational debrief of the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, November 2018, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire of the modern era in the United States. We walk through the incident as it unfolded, the early warning signs, the rapid fire growth, the evacuation failures, and the brutal reality that most of the devastation occurred within the first four hours. This is not a dramatic retelling. It is a structured breakdown of how fire behaviour,

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85:36

#437 The Great Liberties Whiskey Fire Dublin 1875...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/12

In this episode, Pete Wakefield is joined by Las Fallon to explore one of the most extraordinary and misunderstood fires in European fire service history: the Great Dublin Whiskey Fire of 1875. This was not simply a large urban fire. It was an incident where tens of thousands of gallons of high-proof whiskey escaped bonded warehouses, flowed through the streets of Dublin, ignited, and turned parts of the city into rivers of fire. More people died from human behaviour and misunderstanding of risk

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16:09

#436 DEBRIEF: The Station Nightclub Fire 2003 Rhode...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/09

In this episode, we take a deep, minute-by-minute debrief of the Station nightclub fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island. A small ignition during a live music performance led to rapid smoke production, catastrophic loss of tenability, and the deaths of 100 people in less than six minutes. Drawing on investigation findings and eyewitness accounts, this episode focuses not on spectacle, but on how smoke, time, and human behaviour combined to turn a familiar venue into a fatal trap.This is not a story of

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96:18

#435 Lucy Macleod on Identity Beyond the Uniform and...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/05

In this episode, I’m joined by Lucy Macleod for an honest conversation about identity, resilience, and what it really takes to sustain a long career in the fire service. We talk about being more than one thing, how busyness can become a coping mechanism, and why balance looks different for everyone. Drawing on Lucy’s experience across operational firefighting, trauma excellence, leadership, and academia, this conversation cuts past surface level wellbeing talk and gets into what actually helps

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72:16

#434 Search Patterns, Nozzles and Who Wears BA with...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/02

In part two, the conversation moves fully into the practical end of the fireground. Dave Payton and Iain Evans dig into search patterns, hose and branch techniques, and how different nozzle choices are used both in the UK and internationally. This episode challenges some deeply held habits, looking at where traditional search methods can introduce risk, how water application actually changes conditions, and why understanding flow and movement matters more than sticking rigidly to a single method.We

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113:40

#433 2025 Debrief: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2026/01/01

This episode is essentially a long, mostly uninterrupted monologue charting the slow and graceful unraveling of my internal thought processes over the last twelve months. There is no guest. There is no structure anyone would recognise as sensible. Just me talking through what 2025 actually looked like, what the podcast quietly became, and the ideas, questions, and mild existential spirals that refused to leave me alone this year.If you’ve ever wondered what’s really behind the podcast, what I

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67:57

#432 Fire Behaviour: Training vs Reality with Dave...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2025/12/29

In part one of this two-part episode, I’m joined by Dave Payton and Ian Evans, co-founders of Fire Tactics and two of the most experienced fire behaviour and breathing apparatus instructors to have worked in the UK fire service. With decades of experience spanning West Midlands Fire Service, the Fire Service College, and national BA and fire behaviour training, this conversation cuts straight through doctrine, buzzwords and inherited habits to focus on what actually happens when theory meets

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97:52

#431 The Psychology of Rescue with Dr Lynsey Mahmood PhD

Firefighter Podcast ·

2025/12/26

In this episode, Pete sits down with Dr Lynsey Mahmood, PhD, a behavioural scientist and applied psychologist whose work bridges academic research and real world fire and rescue operations. The conversation explores how psychology shows up on the fireground every day, whether we acknowledge it or not. From watch culture and social identity to leadership, behaviour change, and organisational blind spots, Lynsey explains why who we are, how we belong, and what we value shape the way we act under

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106:39

#430 Never on a 10: Leadership, Accountability and...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2025/12/23

Today’s conversation is with Bob Palestrant, a firefighter, emergency manager and author of Never on a 10, whose career spans more than four decades across nursing, paramedicine, frontline firefighting, urban search and rescue, aviation firefighting and homeland security. Bob spent over twenty years working in one of the busiest battalions in North America, deployed with Florida Task Force 1 including Ground Zero after 9/11, and later held senior leadership roles coordinating responses to aviation

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73:16

#429 Building a Fire Service at the Roof of the...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2025/12/22

This episode is being recorded from Lukla in Nepal, the gateway to Everest and the Khumbu Valley. A place where life happens at altitude, infrastructure is limited, and when something goes wrong the community cannot rely on fast backup arriving from down the road. Fire, rescue, and medical emergencies here are dealt with by local people, on foot, in extreme conditions, often hours away from definitive care. At the centre of that reality is Sonam, the local fire chief, and the community he serves.We

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125:15

#428 Closing the Gap Between Fire Science and the...

Firefighter Podcast ·

2025/12/15

This episode goes deep into the reality of fire behaviour as it actually shows up on the fireground, not the simplified version many of us were taught early on. Matt and I talk about how modern fuels, building design and ventilation have changed the speed and violence of fire development, why smoke is often the biggest killer in the room, and how firefighters still get caught out by flow paths, rapid fire development and unseen pyrolysis. We get into high rise and complex buildings, wildfire versus

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470 results

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